It was the summer of 1980.
The Olympics were about to take place in Moscow. The world was in crisis. The Games were threatened. The USA reacted, imposing sanctions on the USSR and boycotting the Games!
It was a model established during the previous Games in 1976 by African countries that deployed the power of sport to fight a global injustice.
In December of 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan and took over the Asian country.
The man that was President of the United States was Jimmy Carter.
Amongst other actions taken, Jimmy Carter stopped his country’s athletes from attending the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The 447 American athletes were made to pay the ultimate price in sport – giving up their dreams of becoming Olympians, and missing out on the benefits that often came with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become rich, powerful and famous. All of this for a cause ‘unconnected’ directly to sport.
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It was a huge sacrifice by the ‘innocent’ USA athletes considering that there was an alternative. They could have done what British athletes did. The UK boycotted the Games but the athletes competed as individuals.
So, what did the American government do to ‘compensate’ the American athletes?
Two weeks ago, Jimmy Carter died.
Part of the tributes written in his honour during his burial was the recall of the aftermath of the 1980 Games that the USA boycotted for reasons outside of sports.
He invited the affected American athletes to the White House, feted them, recognized them officially in America as Olympians, and decorated each of them with the US Congressional Award, the highest civilian honour in the USA.
President Jimmy Carter once ran into one of the athletes at the airport several years after the boycott. He went to the athlete and apologized to him saying ‘I am sorry’.
It was a lesson to the world on how to treat sports heroes that make the ultimate sacrifice for their country. He must have drawn lessons from what happened at the Montreal Olympics on ‘how NOT to treat sports heroes used as political Pawns’.
It was 1976.
The 21st Olympiad was about to start in the Canadian city of Montreal.
The Frontline States in Africa were fighting a war of liberation and Independence. These were countries sharing common borders with South Africa. They included Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Namibia and so on. Nigeria was far away in West Africa, but as the undisputed ‘Giant of Africa’ at the time, probably the only African country with the might, the means, and the resources to champion the cause of fighting the last vestiges of colonialism and Apartheid in the continent, was a leader of the Frontline struggle, staying upfront in pursuit of justice for ‘brother-Africans’.
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Along with Tanzania, Nigeria led 29 countries (27 from Africa) to boycott the 1976 Olympic Games for the first time in history.
It was a huge price for the athletes to pay – to give up the life-changing, once-in-a-life-time chance (along with attendant benefits) for the struggle against injustice to fellow Africans.
It was the first of such major political incursion into International Sport. It gave birth to, probably, the ‘worst’ Olympic Gomes in history, one that denied hundreds of African athletes the opportunity to showcase their talent, and to exploit the opportunities that would have impacted their lives for good and forever as Olympians and possible medal winners.
It was quite a sacrifice to make. The athletes were thrown out of the Games like dirty rags.
And what did the governments of the 27 African countries do to compensate or reward their athletes? To this day, 48 years later, nothing! Zero! Rien du tout!
Their story and sacrifice were forgotten, buried in the archives of gathering dust, until two years ago.
A humble Nigerian citizen, Allen Onyema, came along, heard the Montreal Olympics story and decided to do what Jimmy Carter did 45 years ago, and even more!
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As Jimmy Carter was being buried as a hero in the United States, I was remembering Allen Onyema who is alive and kicking.
Two years ago, before an audience that included some legendary international athletes, Filbert Bayi from Tanzania, Ron Freeman from the USA, all the surviving members of the 1976 Nigerian Olympic team, Allen Onyema held a reception where he recalled their sacrifice, feted and celebrated the athletes and rewarded each one of them.
He funded the construction of a beautiful edifice within the premises of Nigeria’s foremost diplomatic institution, the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs in Lagos, with a ‘Wall of Fame’ on which were inscribed, in Gold, the names of all the athletes. The structure has become a national monument, forever.
Allen further appointed them ‘Ambassadors of Air Peace’, the largest privately-owned commercial airline fleet in Africa, with the benefit to fly, free-of-charge and in Business Class, on any domestic route in Nigeria any number of times, and on one international flight a year, to any destination around the world where Air Peace flies to, for the rest of their lives. I testify that we are all enjoying the benefits today.
This 18th day of January, 2025, Jimmy Carter and Allen Onyema are on my mind! May the Creator of the Universe bless them!
Dr. Olusegun Odegbami, MON, OLY, AFNIIA, FNIS.
