When the curtain fell on the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games, Team Nigeria had firmly rewritten its international script, finishing as Africa’s top-performing nation with a remarkable 24-medal haul, including 10 historic gold medals. From Samuel Ogazi’s blistering 400m victory to Goodness Nwachukwu’s world-record-shattering discus throw, individual brilliance once again carried the weight of a nation.
Yet, beneath the euphoria of a seventh-place global finish lies a sobering truth: this triumph was achieved within a severely condensed 10-sport programme. While Nigerian athletes proved that talents can thrive in adversity, relying on sporadic bursts of individual brilliance is no longer a viable national strategy. If Glasgow proved anything, it is that Nigeria’s much-desired excellence in sports cannot survive on a football-first diet. It is time to move from a singular-sport approach to a diversified, multi-sport business ecosystem.
As the dust settles, the new National Sports Commission (NSC) must move beyond the modest achievements recorded in Glasgow and aggressively deepen Nigeria’s sports diversification drive. This is imperative because, for decades, Nigeria’s sporting budget, media attention and corporate sponsorship have been disproportionately concentrated on a single sport: football. Unfortunately, time and again, the national football teams have failed to deliver despite enormous funding. Meanwhile, genuine athletic heavyweights such as weightlifting, athletics, combat sports and para-sports have often been left to survive on financial leftovers.
If previous administrations had paid serious attention to sports diversification as the present NSC leadership is trying to do, perhaps Team Nigeria’s performance at the 2026 Commonwealth Games would have been even better despite the exclusion of some sports that have traditionally been Nigerian strongholds.
Team Nigeria’s major setback was that Glasgow 2026 featured 215 medal events across a highly streamlined programme of just 10 sports, including six integrated para-sports. To cut operational costs, the event was designed within a compact four-venue radius, resulting in the smallest general sports programme at the Games since 1994.
The official 10-sport lineup consisted of athletics and para-athletics, including the return of the Commonwealth Mile; swimming and para-swimming; artistic gymnastics; track cycling and para-track cycling; netball; weightlifting and para-power-lifting; boxing; judo; bowls and para-bowls; and 3×3 basketball and 3×3 wheelchair basketball. Several traditional sports were excluded, including wrestling, table tennis, badminton, rugby sevens, cricket, hockey, road cycling and triathlon.
Without a doubt, Team Nigeria’s performance was affected by the removal of wrestling and table tennis, two of the country’s most reliable and historically dominant medal-winning sports. Wrestling, in particular, has traditionally been Nigeria’s most dominant weapon at the Commonwealth Games, leading many to conclude that its exclusion from Glasgow significantly reduced Nigeria’s chances of meeting its target of at least 20 gold medals.
At the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Nigerian wrestlers alone won seven medals, including three gold medals, courtesy of elite champions such as Blessing Oborududu, Odunayo Adekuoroye and Mercy Genesis. With wrestling entirely absent from the Glasgow programme, these world-class athletes were denied the opportunity to defend their titles, representing a potential loss of several medals.
The exclusion of these sports placed enormous pressure on athletes in track and field and para-sports, who had to dig deep to compensate for the medals lost through the absence of wrestling, table tennis and badminton.
Nigeria’s success at the Games was, therefore, driven largely by individual brilliance in athletics, weightlifting and para-sports, with Samuel Ogazi, Ezekiel Nathaniel, Chukwuebuka Enekwechi, Goodness Nwachukwu, Folashade Oluwafemiayo, Esther Nworgu, Rilwan Idris, Edidiong Umuofia, Onome Didih and Rafiatu Lawal among those who clinched gold medals.
However, while Nigeria featured prominently in athletics, its presence was barely felt in swimming, another sport that offers a large number of medal opportunities at the Commonwealth Games.
Athletics consistently features more than 40 events across track, field and marathon categories for men, women and para-athletes, while swimming typically offers dozens of medal events across individual strokes, individual medleys and relays.
Unfortunately, despite the abundance of medal opportunities in swimming, Nigeria featured only four swimmers-three men and one woman-with little impact. In cycling, Team Nigeria had just one competitor in track cycling, while judo, once one of the country’s strongholds, had only four athletes. Boxing meanwhile featured six Nigerians.
Team Nigeria was completely absent from artistic gymnastics, lawn bowls and para-bowls, as well as netball, all of which offered medal opportunities. The non-participation of Nigerian athletes in these disciplines contributed significantly to the inability of the contingent to meet its medal target despite improved incentives from the NSC.
This brings us back to the need for the NSC to deepen its efforts to promote other sports and reduce Nigeria’s overdependence on football as the country pursues greater global sporting accomplishments. It is baffling that a country with a huge population of young people who are naturally gifted in sports still struggles to identify and nurture talents capable of representing the country in sporting events that often appear to be the exclusive preserve of Europeans. Given the right infrastructure, coaching and support, Nigerian youths-who are known for achieving remarkable results even under challenging circumstances-can excel in less-patronised sporting disciplines.
It is, therefore, necessary to commend the NSC for not stopping at the creation of the National Intermediate Games for U-18 and U-20 athletes, but also establishing the Diaspora Talent Discovery Committee to ensure that foreign-born or foreign-based Nigerian athletic talents are systematically and legally scouted into the national talent pool at an early stage.
If properly managed, this policy could help Nigeria challenge European dominance in sports such as swimming, gymnastics, cycling, figure skating, bobsleigh, ice hockey, fencing, baseball and cricket, among others. While Nigeria boasts of a vibrant sports culture dominated by football, basketball, athletics, wrestling, weightlifting and boxing, several internationally popular disciplines remain virtually non-existent or receive little attention because of geographic, infrastructural and economic limitations.
To avoid the setback Team Nigeria experienced in Glasgow because of the exclusion of wrestling and table tennis, and to ensure that the country is not perpetually held to ransom by football, we must support the NSC in accelerating the growth of all sports. Even before now, many had recognised the danger of putting all our eggs in one basket.
The missed opportunities in Glasgow, including the medals that could have come from excluded sports, as well as recent disappointments involving the Super Eagles and Super Falcons, should serve as a catalyst for moving Nigerian sports from a football-centred system to an all-encompassing model in which every sport receives meaningful attention and investment. Sports diversification in Nigeria is no longer something to negotiate; it must be pursued without further delay.
Based on the foregoing, the NSC, existing sports federations, relevant stakeholders and the federal government must work harmoniously to deepen Nigeria’s sports diversification drive. To achieve this, the sports sector must be treated as a viable commercial industry rather than a government welfare project.