Radio Nigeria began coverages of the National Sports Festivals from the maiden edition in Lagos in 1973 but with a heavy focus on football, and as time went on, the broadcast crew discovered that multi sports events require intensity and fair share for all the competitive sports. You set out in the morning transversing the venues which normally are scattered with some sports held in a nearby town. Depending on the number in your coverage team, you must maximize personnel and materials to ensure no sport is marginalized. You gather materials as much as you can and prepare for a 30-minute package while making room for the evening games and possible breaking news and news alerts.

The live commentary is a different kettle of fish, because that day alters the normal daily coverage plan. There must be Sports-Bits at the hour, Eye witness account from the games, and a scheduled time of 30 minutes to summarize all the day’s activities. In the multi-sport games, be it Olympics, All Africa Games, Commonwealth games and Sports Festivals all these must be scheduled including periodic interjections when the world record is created or broken especially in the Olympics, Individual sports like Swimming, Athletics, Wrestling, Taekwondo and Boxing for instance are multi medal sports and focus on them will catapult such state to the pinnacle of medals table while team sports like Football, Basketball, Volleyball, Handball can only count as one medal even though all members of the team are decorated with the medal they won.

Success in sports in the old Eastern region meant you won the gold medal in football, and that was why the gold medal won by the East Central State football team, The Spartans, was all they wanted to hear about. That final between the Benue-Plateau team dominated by the Mighty Jets of Jos players and Spartans, made up largely of Rangers International players, was the high point of the maiden National Sports Festival. People thronged in to watch the Atuegbu brothers, Sule Kekere, the Uba brothers, the Mambos etc. on one hand, and Emma Okala, Godwin Achebe, Mathias Obianika, Dominic Nwobodo, Harrison Mecha and a host of other frontline players in the Nigerian national team. It was a heart-breaking moment for the Benue-Plateau boys who lost a penalty in the dying minutes of the encounter. In the end it was General Yakubu Gowon, himself an indigene of Benue-Plateau state having to present the gold medal to the victorious Spartans at the expense of his state.

Every Sports Festival had its peculiarities aligning with the culture of the host and the perception of the organizers. In Kwara ’85, the cynosure was on the Golden Eaglets players who were playing for their various states shortly after lifting the maiden FIFA U16 World Soccer tournament in China. Edo State had a preponderance of the players and therefore was a team to look out for. Imo ’88 Sports Festival activities were done more outside the Dan Anyiam Stadium Owerri. Many spectators including sports journalists were more excited to behold the “legendary” hospitality of Imo people including the famous” ofe Owerri” and other accompaniments. As a matter of fact, the Press Centre for the games was non-existent in the first three days after the opening ceremony. It was after a series of complaints from journalists that a manageably functional press center was now put up. Perhaps the “unforgettable” National Sports Festival was held in Bauchi in 1991.   It was a festival like no other. Accommodation was chaotic, but the lowlight was the invasion of the hotels, hostels and the games village housing the athletes, coaches, journalists and tourists by a terror group suspected to be Maita Stine. This overnight invasion which lasted till the morning of the next day brought mayhem and untold hardship to many people, some of whom fled on foot, in their pajamas towards Toro local government area and Jos the capital of Plateau state. Many of our sports journalists were caught in the mayhem as their hotel was right inside the heart of the town. We (the FRCN crew) would have been involved but on getting to the hotel as the leader of the FRCN team, I became very uncomfortable with the environment and the crowd of people milling around. We left there to Awallah Hotel on Bauchi Maiduguri Road after roaming round the town for hours. Tony Akhiotu, one of us, asked me why I rejected the Hotel Terminus, I told him about my dream or a premonition of an attack on the lives of the visitors. I wouldn’t know why I had that feeling, but it looked real inside me, and I warned the crew members not to be adventurous during the games. After our coverage on the day, I told everybody we must leave the city center and restrict our activities in the hotel. My crew members were not happy because there were little or no social activities in our hotel including a “no alcohol policy” of the hotel management. In fact, Allen Agbo said that I had decided to make them an orphan. Because of this, I started planning for us to leave in search of a more centrally positioned and liberally minded hotel, either in Obunna Hotel, right beside the stadium or Zaranda Hotel on Bauchi-Jos Road. That night the bubble burst and we didn’t know up until we left for the coverage of the day. There was something eerie about the atmosphere. The weather was still, with little or no traffic except the speeding military/police vehicles. I became afraid again and asked the driver to lay-by. Everybody laughed at me when I asked why they were not getting the same vibes as me. We moved on and Tandem/Denique, we ran into a roadblock by the military/police joint patrol. What we saw was mind boggling and jaw dropping, By the roadside were dead bodies and half dead bodies, butchered and maimed, agonizingly writhing in pain. The soldiers had to escort us back to the hotel and we had to alert everybody of the mayhem nearby. I kept asking myself, suppose we ran into the rampaging gang? And suppose the soldiers did not take that route? Only God could tell what would have become of us. We ran into the rooms when we got to the hotel, visibly shaken, and it dawned on everybody that my instincts were right after all. Tony Akhiotu tells this story anytime we meet, and he warns everybody to listen when I “prophesy”. There was no coverage that day, who or what will you cover? We were completely subdued by what we saw but thank Heavens, the broadcast of Col. Abu Ali, the then military governor reassured us that nobody attending the games was killed or maimed, and on the next two days, games fully resumed with athletes under military escorts to and from their venues. Many people left to stay in Jos; some left the games completely. We now had space to relocate to Zaranda Hotel which had 24-hour surveillance and at least you could drink your beer, even though at cutthroat price. But what really happened? Stories all over but from the government side, it was a group of miscreants trying to disrupt the games. The journalists were gagged, caged and induced to align with the story line of the Bauchi government. Kudos must however be extended to Col Abu Ali the governor, I hear he was a Christian, who gave orders to shoot- at-sight on perceived troublemakers. He was not ready to pander to them in the usual Nigerian curious way, and they realized it and ran away. All the journalists were given a commendation letter and a “thank you” handshake at the end of the festival.

If there were records set at the festival or records broken, nobody cared. What we were after was for the games to end. We heard that the immediate trigger of the violence was at the swimming pool with hordes of women in bikinis, swimsuits and “revealing” trunks which pricked their sensibilities. I didn’t know, and don’t know the real stories apart from what we know about Nigeria and her peculiarities. Where and how did I get the premonition of danger and subsequent attack? It just came to me as we were about to check into the first hotel. The environment, the crowd of people moving freely inside the premises without qualms and the location of the hotel just beside a mosque and right inside the market area may have triggered the feeling. While some festivals are recollected with nostalgia, I was in Ilorin from where Radio Nigeria started mounting full OB coverage in Benin, in Owerri, in Makurdi, in Kaduna, in Port Harcourt , also I was in Abeokuta during the Gateway Games in 2006 where I served as a member of the games organizing Committee, and each had its unique pleasant memories to cherish, but Bauchi’91 remains the “Maita Sine” infested National Sports Festival.