August 04, (THEWILL) – A viral video that was posted via the account of Nigeria’s Olympics shot put finalist Chukwuebuka Enekwechi on the video-sharing social networking service TikTok quickly became the cause of several harsh criticisms of the government over the welfare of the country’s contingent before the video was deleted.
What incensed those who shared their displeasure about the conditions of the athletes representing the country was that it was a video of Enekwechi washing his jersey in preparation for the Thursday, August 5 final of the shot put event for which he qualified.
As THEWILL reported, Enekwechi kept Nigeria’s opportunity for a first medal in shot put at the Games on course after advancing to the final on Tuesday. His fourth place finish meant he needed to improve some more to brighten his chances but instead of using every available time to prepare, he was caught up in laundry duties.
The athlete who posted the video through his Instagram account “@thechuksay” gave the reason why he needed to devote time to washing his jersey in the caption of the video, where he wrote: “When you made the Olympic Finals, but you only have one jersey.”
Before the video was deleted, reactions had come in fiercely as vexed Nigerians criticised the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) and the government for what one commenter believed to be the “latest embarrassment from Team Nigeria Tokyo2020 drama series”.
Many recalled the embarrassing disqualification of no fewer than 10 Nigerian athletes because they failed to meet the standard test requirements due to “officials’ negligence” from the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) where infighting at the top has rendered athletics governance null and void.
The disparaging criticisms of the government and the incredibly disorganised state of the administrative side of the Nigerian participation at the Games, which even coach Mike Brown of D’Tigers team alluded to, were very clear in comment after comment of all those who interacted with the video.
The embarrassment of having the country’s athlete, whose efforts gave him a chance of a medal finish, manually doing his laundry to have a clean jersey for the final because that was the only one he was provided with was evident throughout.
It was a pity, as one vexed commenter, William Akpabio through his account @Wilhelmjnr, put it in very related terms in the spirit of the Olympics itself, that “Nigeria keeps winning in the ‘how low can you go’ challenge. We keep breaking our own record in that event.”
As difficult as was is to conceive, much less believe, there was some thinking to do about the position that another commenter Uche Klasique, with the account @UcheKlasique, took when he commented: “They thought he’d lose in the first round, so no need to do waste More money for his jersey.”
Fortunately for Enekwachi, the 2018 Commonwealth Games Silver medallist and reigning African champion in shot put, he has proven to be more than a one round champion in the international stage. He showed why he was a 12-time All-American, five-time NCAA medalist, and four-time Big Ten champion at Purdue.
With his immaculate jersey, the 2019 African Games champion and the reigning Nigerian National Sports Festival champion will have Nigerians backing him all the way to a podium finish when competition resumes on Thursday.
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
