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Rivers Emerges 2nd In Eko 2012
However, Delta state was unable to match Team Rivers’ performance and margin of victory at the 17th edition at Garden City Games 2011 of 136 to 80 gold medals.
Team Rivers hauled 76 gold, 71 and 71 silver and bronze medals, respectively, to finish second at the Eko 2012. Festival hosts, Lagos state won a total of 183 medals, 65 gold, 47 silver and 71 bronze to place third on the log, while Edo and Bayelsa states made the top five with 25 gold, 23 silver and 44 bronze and 19gold, 17 silver and 23 bronze medals, respectively.
It was a fiesta where every competing state won something. Katsina state finished bottom of the rung with three bronze medals in their kitty, Sokoto state secured four bronze medals and Gombe state one silver and two bronze medals to finish 36th and 35th, respectively out of the competing 36 states and FCT.
With the results, Delta, Rivers and Lagos states have won the Federal Government’s N20m. N15m and N10m prize money for the first, second and third place finishers at Eko 2012 pronounced by the Vice president, Namadi Sambo on behalf of President Goodluck Jonathan during the fiesta’s opening ceremony.
But the story might have been different if the environment and conditions that surrounded the sporting fiesta had been totally fair to every competitor. According to Rivers state commissioner for sports, Hon Fred Igwe in a breakfast meeting with sports journalists at the weekend, Team Rivers was prepared and ready to defend the title it won in the last edition but met several discrepancies and distractions in officiating, organisation and ethical conduct in the overall execution of Eko 2012.
Apart from the obvious questionable manner in which most events involving Team Rivers were handled by umpires and technical officials, especially, in basketball, volleyball, weightlifting, taekwondo, boxing, table tennis and even cycling, the way the team’s nine gold medals hopeful in swimming, Duotimi Gagbe was made to lose medals via suspension based on spurious claims by Bayelsa state smacked of gang up against the defending champion of the festival. Gagbe was only allowed to compete after some of her events had passed through the intervention of the Main Organising Committee, MOC.
Hon Igwe said at the meeting that the rumours of gang up and outright bribery for medals had filtered to the attention of his contingent but coming from a state which the chief executive does not encourage corruption with the knowledge that it would not help the state move forward in its vision of development and excellence, they had to distance themselves from the malady.
Unfortunately, Team Rivers did not only suffer in action or in the hands of desperate officials, some of the athletes it trained, paid entitlements and even brought to lagos sabotaged it by abandoning the team.
Hon Igwe disclosed that an athlete the state registered was seen in Lagos competing for Abia state, while four wrestlers of recruited from a neighbouring state who were being banked on for medals abandoned Team Rivers camp over night and were not seen again to fuel the suspicion that there forces that really did not want the state to win in Lagos.
Also speaking at the meeting, a member of Team Rivers Participation Committee, Elder Amabipi Martins said, “We came here to defend our title but met so many distractions, the conspiracy theory may be true, it needs to be investigated”.
Amabipi went ahead to charge the sports journalists to lead the campaign to sanitise the nation’s sports and the National Sports Festival in particular by going deep to unearth the rot and those oiling the wheels of the ‘win at all costs syndrome’ at competitions.