Nigeria, difficult country for taekwondo athletes –Chukwumerije

Chika Chukwumerije
 

Beijing 2008 Olympic gold medallist, Chika Chukwumerije, gives insight on the roles of his sports foundation in Nigerian sports development. The three-time Olympian tells KAZEEM BUSARI the challenges taekwondo faces in the country

Why did you set up the Chika Chukwumerije Sports Foundation and what do you intend to achieve with it?

Simply to produce educated champions and to inspire the future. Sports and education have played huge roles in my personal development. These two fields have taken me to over 25 countries, exposed me to life-changing experiences, made me valuable friends and given me the tools to tackle an uncertain future. Every Nigerian child should have that kind of opportunity.

The foundation was set up to better guide and aid young Nigerians and West Africans who have decided to engage in sports. We hope to encourage them in their studies as well as facilitate programmes that will help in building their physical, technical and tactical abilities as budding athletes.

The second edition of the CCSF International Taekwondo Open holds in Abuja this weekend and it will feature teams from Mali and Niger Republic.

Why the focus on taekwondo alone?

My core competence is in operations and supply chain management, and I fully bring this expertise to the drawing table when I sit with my team to strategise on moving forward. For me, every educated champion that is made is a product, and we desire to make thousands and thousands of them. I look at the end-to-end process required to turn, for instance, a scrawny and insecure kid into a world-renowned educated champion. We have done a value-stream map to pin-point the bottlenecks along the way and to highlight areas where we could tackle inefficiencies. 

We have created a model that can be used to produce educated sports people in any sport. We decided to focus on taekwondo in the first two years of our operations (2012 and 2013) because of the obvious advantages we have in the sport, primarily the vast knowledge I have garnered as a taekwondo practitioner over the decades.

 The model will be expanded to include a couple of other sports next year. For the past 12 months, my team has been researching the status quo of some other sports in the country. We want to determine what is actually needed in a sport and learn the peculiar challenges that have faced each discipline over the decade.

What is the relationship between CCSF and the Nigeria Taekwondo Federation?

We have a very professional and cordial relationship. The taekwondo federation is quite clear on how it wants to be approached by taekwondo bodies or persons interested in doing supplementary work in the sport. At CCSF, we make sure we inform the federation of all our programs, and we negotiate the operational roles if the federation is going to be involved directly in any of our programs. 

The NTF is the governing body for taekwondo in the country, so our relationship with them is very vital if we really want to make any significant impact in the careers of taekwondo athletes in Nigeria. 

For instance, during our tournament last year, the NTF played a vital role in reaching out to all the member states for participation. The NTF also played a vital role in convincing the CCSF staff to be part of organising the taekwondo events during the last National Sports Festival. There are many more situations in which the NTF and CCSF have had to collaborate in order to improve the standard of the sport in Nigeria.

Is CCSF an after-thought after your unimpressive performance at the London Olympics?

My disappointment at the London 2012 Olympics has nothing to do with this vision, just as my medal success at Beijing 2008 did not by itself inspire it. The Olympic experience was a personal journey for me, and was vital for my career as an athlete. The CCSF is a life-long journey that has started finding its own, and seeks to be vital to the careers of thousands of other athletes.

The foundation started in June 2010. It was registered February 14, 2012. The idea was formed in 2007 after the All-Africa Games in Algiers, where I witnessed a few disturbing things. For instance, I had to fill the immigration form for some of my teammates because they could not read and write. I had to give money to some teammates months after the Games, because they did not have a sustainable income.

The women’s team did well at COJA 2003, while the men were below par. The situation was reversed at the 2007 and 2011 edition of the Games.

After detailed analysis, I realised there was no sustainable training regime in place to maintain and improve the athletes’ quality. Some athletes train themselves on the streets where we pick them up, use them, they win medals, and then they are back to the streets. The only value we have added to them is the training and allowance they receive during camping and competitions, and bragging rights of having represented the country.

I believe athletes should be groomed more properly, paid better, taught and exposed to higher quality training, encouraged to receive formal education that would be vital to their post-athletic careers.

 How do you plan to sustain the foundation?

To cover our operating costs, we engage and involve the states where we hold our programmes. At other times, we provide our event management services to organisations who want them. Our last means, which is least effective, has been personal funding and donations.

Can you say you are fulfilled as an athlete?

If I knew then what I know now, my career would probably have progressed very differently. Nigeria is a difficult country in which to develop as a taekwondo athlete. The tactical and technical knowledge I know now would have served me much better as an athlete growing up. Given the conditions in which I developed, I could not have done much more. I was engaging on so many fronts to have done what I did. The victory was in the journey I undertook, not so much the successes and losses encountered along the way. That experience will be with me all my life, and I will forever cherish it.

What are the long term plans of the foundation?

To continually be relevant to athletes all over Nigeria and West Africa. We will continue to design and implement programs that add real value in whatever sport we engage. We will seek, as our motto says, to produce educated champions and to inspire the future.