By Steve Alabi
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As it has become usual with media coverage of sports events happening within our shores, it was as if the just concluded 19th National Sports Festival did not happen. Our media almost blacked out the entire games as if Abuja 2018 was a fiction. But it was not. It was a two-week affair involving 8,861 participants, out which 7,227 were athletes, 710 coaches, 222 team members and 702 state officials.

While the assertion that what the Press did not report did not happen may be true in journalistic terms, it is rebuttable by the mere fact that a happened event cannot be consigned to fiction by wishful media neglect. An event that has taken place and which involved people and facilities assumes a life of its own, giving it enough capability to resist being threaded into oblivion by media indifference.

So it is with the 2018 games of unity. The competition has defied media blackout. It is alive and kicking but it is not in the public domain as it should. News reportage of the games was at best perfunctory. Newspapers hardly dedicated special coverage to the games. Where we found stories on the games at all, they were mostly agency or syndicated reports. Action photographs were hardly used, let alone side attractions. There were no feature stories.

Broadcast was almost worse. The electronic media outdid themselves in abdicating their responsibility. Except for the NTA, there was no live broadcast of any aspect of the competition on the television networks. Neither was their audience given indepth treatment of stories. Special interviews were not featured. It was as if the games took place in the imagination of the organizers, officials and athletes, and not in reality.

In times past, the National Sports Festival was not only the biggest sports competition in the country but also one huge media event. Newspapers and news agencies eagerly sent teams of reporters and photographers to cover the games and devoted several pages to well-written previews with charts, figures and photographs, not just a story that the games would begin tomorrow. Columnists would recall history, analyze current strengths and weaknesses of participants and make informed projections. An air of expectation would be created for the readers as well as for the games’ direct stakeholders.

Weeks before the opening day, radio and television stations would also have suffused the air waves with recalls, interviews, analyses, spotlights and features. Television stations would deploy well-drilled coverage crews of reporters, commentators, cameramen and engineers. Radio stations would do the same with their own crews of specialists. The games were, to all intents and purposes, a very important duty and a festival for the media.

The print media of times past produced legends like the indefatigable Tunde Oshuntolu (Esbee) and Jibade Fasina-Thomas of the defunct Daily Times, Kayode Ojo of the defunct Daily Sketch and Ayo Ositelu of The Punch who covered sports with admirable competence and wrote it in incomparable elegance. Esbee was ever witty and magisterial. Jibade-Thomas carried himself with aristocratic air with his incisive knowledge. Kayode Ojo was down to earth and had endless contacts. Ositelu easily transported his readers to the arena that one could feel and hear the swing of racket on the court from his powerful prose. These illustrious pioneers passed on the torch to such crack reporters as Sunny Ojeagbase and Mitchell Obi of The Guardian, Muyiwa Daniel and Kunle Solaja of National Concord, Chris Okojie and Ikedy Isiguzo of Vanguard, Paul Bassey, Fan Ndubuoke and Emeka Inyama of Champion, Blackie Unuigbe of Nigerian Observer, Stephen Sarki Musa of Nigerian Standard, Law Possible of Benue Voice, and Charles Arubi and Bimbo Akinloye of The Punch.

Radio had shining stars like the great pioneers, Isola Folorunso, Bisi Lawrence (Bizlaw), Tolu Fatoyinbo, Sebastian Ofurum and the master craftsman, Ernest Okonkwo of Radio Nigeria who handed over to worthy successors in Emeka Odikpo, Richard Asiegbu and Pius Osenwegie. Here in Ondo State, Ayo Ogedengbe, Yinka Obasa, Martins Ayoola and Toyin Ayoola proved their mettle.

Television had its grandmasters, Fabio Lanipekun, Kere Ahmed, Dele Adetiba, Soji Alakuro and the incredibly talented Yinka Craig who set the pace for stars like Dele Ojeisekhoba, Charles Ojugbana, Rotimi Bisiriyu, Bayo Atoyebi, Okwun Omeaku,Yakubu Ibn Mohammed, Tunde Orebiyi, Willie Sowho, Dele Bakarey, Hameed Adio, Feyi Ogunduyile, Mainasara Ilo, Models Sharaff-Yusuf and my humble self.

What happened? How did we lose it? How did we stop covering our own sports and devoting our energy to promoting foreign shows? The difference between the past and the present is that, in our days, we actually covered sports. But our younger colleagues parrot sports. They lift stories from foreign lands and are content with finished products from Europe and America. Their taste is foreign. The local sauce is not palatable to them.

We are at liberty to accuse them of abandoning the faith of their forefathers. It is difficult for them not to agree that they are guilty as charged.