Victor EzejaFormer Nigeria captain, Dr. Patrick Olusegun Odegbami has reflected on the noble roles of Chairman/founder of Air Peace, Dr Allen Onyema, and ex-United States President, Jimmy Carter, in sports.
Odegbami penned an incisive piece, highlighting the impact of the noble gestures of Onyema and Carter to sport heroes who made ultimate sacrifices for their countries at different times and the place of the two men in sports history.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelJimmy Carter, who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, died on 29 December 2024 at the age of 100. During his burial recently, some of the things written as tribute and read out in his honour were about what happened after the 1980 Olympics Games that the USA boycotted. The games which took place in Moscow, Russia was boycotted by the USA over what was considered injustice in the manner in which the USSR invaded Afghanistan in 1979.
Carter stopped the USA athletes from participating in the games, denying them the opportunity of winning prizes and other benefits that could have come with their successes in the event.
To atone for that, Carter later invited the athletes to the White House where he gave them official recognition as Olympians, and decorated each of them with the US Congressional Award, the highest civilian honour in the USA.
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Odegbami recalled another humble gesture of Carter when he ran into one of the athletes at the airport several years after the boycott. The late ex-president went to the athlete and apologised for what they encountered.
“It was a lesson to the world on how to treat sports heroes that make the ultimate sacrifice for their country,” Odebgbami stated. “He must have drawn lessons from what happened at the Montreal Olympics on ‘how NOT to treat sports heroes used as political Pawns.”
The former Nigerian international drew parallels between what Carter did for the American athletes who couldn’t participate in the 1980 Moscow Games and what Allen Onyema did for Nigerian athletes who lost chances of participating in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, Canada due to boycott by African countries.
Regarded as the “giant of Africa”, Nigeria had, along with Tanzania, led 29 other African countries to boycott the 1976 Olympic Games, for the first time in history.
This, as Odegbami put it, was in fighting against the “last vestiges of colonialism and apartheid” in Africa while pursuing justice for ‘brother-Africans’.
Odegbami noted that despite the sacrifice made by the athletes who “were thrown out of the Games like dirty rags,” nothing has been done by the African countries to compensate or reward their athletes 48 years later.
“Their story and sacrifice were forgotten, buried in the archives of gathering dust, until two years ago,” Odegbami stated.
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To assuage the feelings of the Nigerian athletes who paid the ultimate price by losing chances of winning medals at the 1976 Montreal Games, the Air Peace Chairman, more than four decades later, decided to honour them.
“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!,” he stated.
“As Jimmy Carter was being buried as a hero in the United States, I was remembering Allen Onyema who is alive and kicking.”
The former captain narrated how the Air Peace Chairman held a reception two years ago for the athletes where he recalled their sacrifice, celebrated and rewarded each one of them.
He went further to mention that Onyema funded the construction of a ‘Wall of Fame’, a beautiful edifice within the premises of the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs in Lagos to immortalise the Nigerian sports heroes. The names of all the athletes were inscribed in Gold on the Wall of Fame.
“The structure has become a national monument, forever,” Odegbami noted.
He also mentioned that Onyema appointed the athletes ‘Ambassadors of Air Peace’, the largest flag carrier in West and Central Africa, with the benefit to fly free-of-charge on Business Class, on any domestic route in Nigeria any time, and on one international flight a year, to any destination around the world where the airline operates to, for the rest of their lives. “I testify that we are all enjoying the benefits today,” Odegbami confessed.
He prayed for God’s blessings upon Carter and Onyema for their humanitarian and philanthropic gestures.
Victor Ezeja is a passionate journalist with six years of experience writing on economy, politics and energy. He holds a Masters degree in Mass Communication.
