High Price for Prizes: Nigeria’s female Athletics coaches seek space in male-dominated field (1)

In her active days as an athlete specialising in 100 metres sprint, Endurance Ojokolo-Akpeki won eight gold medals for Nigeria at continental and inter-continental level, and competed at six editions of the World Athletics Championships, amongst many other competitions. However, one achievement which she greatly desired but which did not materialise was making the final of the 100 metres event at the Olympics.

The seven-time national champion had competed at the Athens 2004 Olympics where she reached the semis, and this motivated her to make a promise to coach an athlete that would compete in the final of the Olympics.

While making this pledge, Ojokolo-Akpeki, who went into coaching in 2010, two years after her last competition for Nigeria, knew it was going to take a lot of sacrifice, hard work and dedication to fulfil. However, she did not reckon that some of the sacrifices she would have to make to remain at the top of her game as an athletics coach in Nigeria would literally involve a lot of pain and tears while embarking on a mission to change the narrative that coaching is strictly a man’s job, as there is lack of female representation in sports coaching in the country.

Where are the female coaches?

According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), only 13 per cent of coaches at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics were women, compared to the number of female athletes (48 percent). It is estimated that there are over 133,386 head coaches currently employed in the United States, with 33.7 percent of them being women. Focussing on Nigeria, this reporter decided to use one of the country’s leading sports, Athletics, to highlight the challenges restraining women in the coaching terrain.

The Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) was established in 1944 as the Amateur Athletic Association of Nigeria. The federation has had only one Head Coach in its nearly 80 years of existence, who also happens to be female. Amelia Edet spent nearly three decades as a coach and served as AFN’s Head Coach from 1999 to 2006 when she retired from active service.

The AFN is one of about 40 sports federations in Nigeria, and is among the top five, falling just behind the likes of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) in terms of popularity and influence. Athletics is important to Nigeria as one of its major medal spinners at global competitions. Fourteen of the 27 medals won by the country in its Olympic participation from 1952 to 2021 came from Athletics.

Nine of the 14 medals Nigeria won in Athletics were secured by women, highlighting the pivotal role female athletes have played in uplifting the image of the country over the years. So, providing an enabling environment for women to thrive ought to be paramount in the Federation’s decision-making process.

Some of Nigeria’s female Olympic medallists include Falilat Ogunkoya (top left) who won a bronze medal in the women’s 400m at the Atlanta ‘96 Olympics; the quartet of Christy Opara-Thompson, Faith Idehen, Beatrice Utondu and Mary Onyali who took bronze in the women’s 4×100 relay at the Barcelona ’92 Olympics (top left); Glory Alozie claimed a silver medal in the 100 metres hurdles at the Sydney 2000 Games (centre left); long jump bronze medallist at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Ese Brume (centre right); the team of Damola Osayomi, Halimat Ismaila, Franca Idoko and Gloria Kemasuode won silver in the women’s 4×100 relay at the Beijing 2008 Olympics (bottom left), and Chioma Ajunwa (bottom right) who struck gold in the women’s long jump at Atlanta ’96 to become the only Nigerian athlete (male or female) to win an individual gold medal at the Olympics.

Others are Mary Onyali (women’s 200 metres bronze, Barcelona ’92), Blessing Okagbare (long jump silver, Beijing 2008), and the squad of Ogunkoya, Fatimat Yusuf, Charity Okpara and Olabisi Afolabi (women’s 4×400 silver, Atlanta ’96).

There are currently 124 coaches registered with the Athletics Coaches Association of Nigeria (ACAN), which is the umbrella body for Athletics coaches in Nigeria, and affiliated to the AFN. But the coaches are not on AFN’s payroll, as they are mostly engaged by the sports associations of the various states. Of that number, only 24 are women – less than a third of the total number of registered Athletics coaches in Nigeria.

As one of the top sports in Nigeria, the AFN presents national teams for several international competitions every year, ranging from continental outings such as the African Senior Championships, African U-20 Championships, African Games, to global events like the Commonwealth Games, Olympics and World Athletics Championships. In recent years, invitation to any of these international competitions has been the major reward system for athletics coaches in Nigeria.

Of the national teams selected for 21 international competitions between 2015 and 2023, (both continental and global), there were only seven female coaches, compared to more than 45 for their male counterparts.

Six of these coaches – Ojokolo-Akpeki (sprints coach), Emily Osakwe (jumps coach), Emilia Oyase (sprints and jumps coach), Olapade Lawal (sprints coach), Rachael Oguntona (long distance) and Nene Akudo, are based in Nigeria, while Pat Itanyi-Williams (sprints, hurdles and jumps), lives in the US.

The duo of Ojokolo-Akpeki and Oyase received the most call-ups (nine), Osakwe got three, while the rest were selected only once each.

Too high a price to pay

Ojokolo-Akpeki’s most prominent athlete, Usheoritse Itsekiri, was men’s 100 metres national champion in 2019 and 2023, and has represented Nigeria at several international competitions, winning continental medals in the process, and also making it to the semifinals at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

And while she has received accolades for the achievements of her athletes, the former African champion has paid a very high price to be where she is today. She said: “In my first marriage, my husband wasn’t really supportive of me being a coach. But I am stubborn; coaching is what I do and what I love, and so I went for it. One of the major reasons that marriage failed was because of my career.

“We were together for 12 years, but there was a lot of quarrelling going on, especially when I had to travel for competitions or when I had to go to the stadium to train my athletes. I wasn’t ready to give up my career as a coach, so I formally ended the marriage in October, 2021. When you hear that a lot of women had to quit coaching because of the lack of support of their spouses, that’s actually the truth.”

Ojokolo-Akpeki’s story mirrors the experiences of her counterparts who have faced similar challenges.

Lawal has coached since 2002 and currently trains Kayinsola Ajayi, a two-time gold medallist at the 2023 African U-20 Championships held in Zambia back in April, amongst other athletes. In fact, the selection of her athlete for that competition earned Lawal an invitation to the team that travelled to Zambia – her first call-up for an international competition. There were six coaches in attendance, with Lawal and Osakwe the two women in the team.

“One of the key challenges we face as female coaches has to do with our husbands. A lot of men don’t understand the challenges that come with being a female coach. Each time we had to travel for competitions, my husband would say all sorts of demeaning and degrading things, insinuating that I had other reasons for travelling, meanwhile not every woman is like that. I couldn’t quit my coaching career because that’s where my happiness lies, so we had to get a divorce,” added Lawal who is raising her four children alone.

Oyase has been a coach for about 17 years now and has received several invitations to international outings, underscoring her depth. Some of the events she’s been to include the African U-20 Championships in Botswana and African Games in Maputo, Mozambique, both in 2011; the 2014 World U-20 Championships in Oregon, USA, and the 2018 African Youth Games and Youth Olympics which took place in Algeria and Argentina, respectively.

Making it to these competitions did not come without a huge cost for Oyase too, who is Head Coach, Athletics, at Oyo State Sports Council. She said, “A lot of men do not understand how sports work, and do not support their wives’ or girlfriends’ careers as coaches, because it is a male-dominated field. It’s easier for female coaches who are unmarried, as they can go wherever they want to and whenever, without being accountable to anyone. She can get back home at 7 p.m. after a training session or attend two training sessions in a day and it wouldn’t be an issue. However, it’s not so simple for the married because some of their husbands want them to be in one place or assume that a woman is up to all sorts of things once she’s away.”

For former national champion in the heptathlon, Itanyi-Williams, navigating the coaching terrain whilst birthing kids is quite a tricky business. The 1999 African Games silver medallist said: “I used to coach at West Virginia University, but when I got married and became pregnant, I realised that I couldn’t coach anymore, because I did not want to take my child to a daycare centre. I chose not to take my daughter there, but what I did was to start private coaching, which I scheduled around home. When my husband is home, I can go and coach.

“As my daughter got older, she could stay in school and participate in after-school programmes while I coached. My husband is supportive, but my being away for long periods was going to take away time I’m meant to spend with my child, because when I was coaching in college, there was a lot of travelling involved. Sometimes, I would leave on a Wednesday and not get back home until Sunday, and that is not good for a child. Now my child is older, but I still cannot leave her, that’s why I’m not coaching in a college now. But in the next two years, I’ll be able to get back into coaching in college.”

Itanyi-Williams, who competed at the Sydney 2000 Olympics and was West Virginia University’s first-ever female track and field national champion, conceded that a lot of thought and strategising has to be involved in the whole process as women coaches have to count the cost of whatever decisions they eventually settle for.

“I’m still doing my private coaching and coaching in high school, because it is not as demanding as that of college. But it’s really rough and challenging for female coaches. I have friends who have had the same experience, and some of them had to stop coaching once they started having kids. That’s the challenge, so you have to consider the situation closely, decide what you want to do and take it from there,” she said.

One step forward, two steps back

Against the backdrop of having to deal with the lack of support on the home-front amongst other challenges, a situation which appears to be peculiar to them, these female coaches feel that the AFN ought to bridge that gap by providing an enabling environment for them to thrive, and to create avenues for more exposure, going by the gender gap that exists, especially as it pertains to invitations into the national teams.

Some of the major athletics competitions Nigeria participated in in 2015 were the African Youth Athletics Championships (AYAC) in Mauritius, African U-20 Championships in Ethiopia, World Championships in Beijing, China, and African Games in Congo Brazzaville. For the AYAC, two female coaches, Ojokolo-Akpeki and Osakwe, were in the eight-person coaching crew.

Thirty-three athletes comprising 18 females and 15 males were listed for the African U-20 Championships in Ethiopia, along with five coaches. Ojokolo-Akpeki was the sole female coach that travelled with the team. However, for the World Championships in Beijing, China, which had 17 athletes participating (14 females and three males), all the four coaches were male. Similarly, the team list for the African Games that boasted of a contingent of 65 athletes (34 women and 31 men) had 13 coaches that were all male.

In 2016, that status quo was maintained for the African Senior Championships in Durban, the World U-20 Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland, as well as the Olympic Games in Rio, with no female coach selected for any of these events. There was a slight improvement at the 2017 World Championships in London where Itanyi-Williams was included in the three-person coaching crew.

The two major competitions for 2018 were the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, and the African Senior Championships in Asaba, Nigeria. Interestingly, Ojokolo-Akpeki was the only female coach selected for both competitions. On the surface, it seemed that progress was being made, but while four coaches made the trip to Gold Coast (three male and one female), of the 17 coaches listed for the championship in Asaba, Ojokolo-Akpeki was the only woman.