Editor’s note: This is the third in a four-part series. See the Jamaica Observer’s publication on Wednesday, September 25, 2024 for the final part.

BAMBO Akani says having access to enough certified coaches was a hurdle organisers had to clear as they explored ways to stage a track and field championships in Nigeria that almost mirrored Jamaica’s world-renowned high school athletics showpiece.

He knew that the MTN Champs — sponsored by Africa’s biggest telecoms company — would fall short of the mark if the coaching was not of a consistently high standard.

“When me and my team came to visit [Jamaica], we saw that there were World Athletics-certified coaches in almost every high school. That’s not something we have in Nigeria,” Akani told the Jamaica Observer.

“As far as I know, we probably have two or three World Athletics coaching courses that train a handful of coaches — maybe 40, 50, 60 coaches — a year. It’s not a huge number at all, and most of these coaches are not affiliated with high schools at all,” the Making of Champions (MoC) founder added.

One key aspect Akani’s team took from the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships in Jamaica was the separation of the athletes by age classes.

“In Nigeria, there’s a National Youth Games which is under 15 and is not attached to the schools, so there’s no real way of tracking who is really under 15 [years old]. But also, when there’s only one age group for everybody, there is huge pressure on everybody to find a way to compete in that age group so, we started with three age groups — Under-20, Under-17 and Under-14 for boys and girls.

“Juniors are Under-20; youths are Under-17; we call the Under-14s cadets. The youth Under-17 and the cadets Under-14, they are both strictly for secondary school students. If your school doesn’t register you, you can’t compete.”

Akani explained that in Nigeria the Under-17s would be senior secondary school students — that’s the last three years at that level. The Under-14s are junior secondary school students, which are the first three years.

“So we’ve done a lot of the thinking about how this should be structured — almost like borrowing the leaf from Jamaica but adapting it for the Nigerian setting, and then in the second season — so that we could transform the events to Olympic qualifying events. That is why we switched it to the first quarter of the year.

“Then we added the fourth age group, which is the seniors. And obviously the seniors don’t compete at Champs in Jamaica but in Nigeria there’s not even competitions for the seniors so we reason that, ‘Okay, the sponsor wants the connection with the schools and the kids but it would be a travesty if our seniors still have nowhere to compete and we have lanes for them to run.’ So, we added the fourth age group. And it was a big hit, a big success, and that’s how it’s going to continue. [We have] age groups Under-14, Under-17, Under-20 and the senior category, so there’s something for everybody now.”

A unique feature of the Nigerian champs is that organisers can use two venues at the same time, in locations where they have two stadia in close proximity.

“We’d have one or two age groups in one stadium and then one or two age groups in another stadium. So we started off with three days in season one, season two we moved to four days for each of the four events, [but] for season three — which we’re in discussions [about] — we are hoping to move back to the original plan for five days,” he explained.

While not getting into the details of the budget, Akani said it was “substantial”.

He added: “I wouldn’t want to get into numbers but I would say that it is on a scale that nobody has ever, I think, invested in athletics as a sport in Nigeria, or any other sport apart from football. This has the potential to change the face of track and field in Nigeria; it has the potential to change the face of track and field globally.”

He outlined that the potential is awesome.

“You know, in all my travels over the last decade, anytime I travelled to Jamaica, USA, anywhere else in the Caribbean, people always told me, ‘Nigerians, if you [only] knew what you have.’

“The only country that might be able to compete with the might of Nigeria — over 200 million people in population — is the USA. And if we get it right, Nigeria can dominate as much as the USA because we also don’t have kids going to NFL [American football] or NBA [basketball]. We do have football, but if that’s the only thing that’s competing with us for talent, I think I’ll take that,” he said.

Akani said they have been steadily expanding the number of events.

“[We have] all the sprints — like most events — pole vault, jumps, throws, so I would imagine it’s similar in Jamaica,” he said.

“We have long jump and high jump but we don’t have triple jump yet. We found that the kids couldn’t actually get through to get to the sand, so we had to take out the triple jump from the Under-14s. We don’t even do the throws at all yet in the Under-14s, and we don’t do the hurdles yet for Under-17, but we have now added the triple jump and we have at least a couple of the throws — the shot put and discus throws.

“We added the 800m to the Under-17s, then it’s not until the Under-20s that we now add the hurdles – 100m, 110m and 400m — and we added the javelin as well. At the senior category we add even more — the middle distance, long distance, and anything else that’s needed at the senior category,” he explained.