News
SPECIAL REPORT: Why Nigerians Should Celebrate Team Nigeria’s Historic Commonwealth Games Campaign—And the Best May Still Be Yet to Come
The Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games are far from over, yet Team Nigeria has already produced a campaign that deserves to be celebrated across the country.
This is not simply because of the medals won so far. It is because Nigerian athletes are breaking records, ending decades-long droughts, reaching historic finals and restoring the country’s status as one of the Commonwealth’s sporting powerhouses.
What makes the achievement even more remarkable is that Glasgow 2026 is being contested in just 10 sports—the smallest Commonwealth Games programme in more than three decades. With fewer sports comes fewer medal opportunities, making every podium finish more valuable than at previous editions.
Yet Team Nigeria has continued to shine.
The country’s weightlifters have once again reminded the world why Nigeria remains a global force in the sport. Edidiong Umoafia, Onome Didih and Rafiatu Folashade Lawal did not just win gold medals—they rewrote the record books with Commonwealth Games record-breaking performances that announced Nigeria’s dominance on the platform.
On the track, Kayinsola Ajayi ended a 20-year wait for a Nigerian medal in the men’s 100 metres by winning bronze in Glasgow. Since Olusoji Fasuba’s silver medal in Melbourne in 2006, no Nigerian male sprinter had climbed the Commonwealth Games podium in the blue-riband event. Ajayi has now revived Nigeria’s proud sprint tradition and shown that the country can once again challenge the Commonwealth’s fastest men.
Perhaps the most emotional moment of the Games came through Temitope Adeshina, whose bronze medal in the women’s high jump ended a remarkable 72-year wait for a Nigerian Commonwealth Games medal in the event. She also became the first Nigerian woman ever to win a Commonwealth Games high jump medal and only the third Nigerian in history to stand on the podium after Josiah Majekodunmi (1950) and Emmanuel Ifeajuna (1954).
History has also been made in the swimming pool.
Abduljabar Adama reached the men’s 50m butterfly final, a landmark achievement for Nigerian swimming. At a Games where countries like Australia, England and Canada traditionally dominate the pool, seeing a Nigerian contest a sprint butterfly final is another sign that the nation is making progress in sports where success has been rare.
On the basketball court, Nigeria’s women’s Wheelchair 3×3 team secured the country’s first-ever Commonwealth Games victory in the event by defeating India, earning a place in the quarterfinals and opening another exciting chapter in Nigerian para sport.
Even the athletes who narrowly missed the podium have contributed to this remarkable campaign. Seventeen-year-old Miracle Ezechukwu reached the women’s 100m semi-finals on her Commonwealth Games debut, while Favour Ashe and Nicholas Fakorede came within touching distance of the men’s 100m final, underlining the depth of Nigeria’s sprint programme.
Behind these achievements is a renewed belief within Team Nigeria.
The National Sports Commission’s athlete-first reforms—including improved welfare, better preparation and immediate financial rewards for medal winners—have created an environment in which athletes can focus on performance. The results are now evident in Glasgow, where Nigerian competitors continue to rise to the occasion against some of the Commonwealth’s best.
Most importantly, the Games are not over.
Nigeria still has athletes competing in athletics, boxing, swimming, para-athletics and other medal events. More opportunities remain, more finals are ahead, and more history could still be written before the curtain falls on Glasgow 2026.
For Nigerians at home and around the world, this is not just a successful Commonwealth Games campaign—it is a statement of resilience, preparation and renewed ambition.
From ending a 72-year medal drought in the high jump, to breaking a 20-year jinx in the men’s 100m, reaching a historic swimming final, recording a first-ever wheelchair basketball victory and rewriting the Commonwealth Games record books in weightlifting, Team Nigeria has already given the nation countless reasons to celebrate.
And if the performances so far are any indication, the biggest celebrations may still lie ahead.
News
WAFCON 2026 Fall-out: Talent Is Least Of Nigeria’s Problems That Prevent Good Results In Sports – Nkechi Obi
As a fact-finding panel commences inquiries into reasons behind recent setbacks hitting all levels and gender of Nigerian football, one of the country’s former officials, Nkechi Obi has declared that talent is not a major problem affecting the nation.
Sports247 reports that Obi, who is an erstwhile head of Nigeria Women Football League (NWFL), noted that the country has an abundance of talent but administrators keep on placing priority on hunting for what they already have, instead of providing platforms for those natural resources to be fully utilised.
Read Also: ‘A Welcome Development’ — Elumelu Backs NFF Fact-Finding Committee
Obi forwarded a deep insight into her viewpoint and made suggestions on the way forward while speaking during ‘Hot Seat’ segment of Sports247’s television programme, Inside Naija Sports, which streams online via YouTube and airs on NTA News 24 at 10am every Saturday.
She added, “We need a pipeline that converts raw talents to finished products seamlessly. The back-end support for this comes in terms of infrastructure that ensure everyone at the grassroots can participate in sports.
“Unfortunately, the conversation in Nigeria has always been about discovery of talents, but that should not be our focus. Talent is the least of our problems.
“Nigeria is like fertile soil where talents spring up naturally. However, the problem we have is how to channel our raw talents into finished products.”
The erudite and highly articulate sports guru, who is also a marketing expert, went on to profer steps that can take Nigeria out of the woods and put the country’s football teams firmly back on track.
Obi added, “We can put things right by creating a vibrant ecosystem on which sporting activities are built. For that to happen, we need adequate infrastructure; so that the whole community can get involved in sports.
“That means, first and foremost, we need to encourage mass participation in sports and put in place a market development strategy. This means we need a community driven participatory strategy that involves everybody who has an interest in sports.
“If you gather as many people as possible together at the community, the ones who are talented will naturally emerge and stand out. That would make it easier to start building your teams on a regular basis.”
She concluded by reeling out the merits of a mass-participation strategy and various benefits that would fall into place for the country, especially in terms of a steady reservoir of raw talents waiting to be harnessed in a gradual progression over time.
“This strategy will help us build a healthier citizenry, develop a vibrant market for goods and improve our service delivery efforts. This will also give us adequate feedback on the financial implications of our sports activities.
“We will be able to judge whether our sports sector is worth billions or not. We will see it by watching data and statistics that flow with the number of people involved in our sports and what they gain from it.
“Many people in Nigeria don’t like looking at data, but I follow it a lot. We have to start looking at figures to know if we are improving or not and what to do next.
“For instance, Little Baseball in America has 80 million children playing every weekend and they can gauge what economic gains can come out of it – if every child buys a bat, gloves, boots and a ball. That’s how you calculate economic development in sports, and you can make projections about dividends it will bring the country as a whole.”
Africa’s largest bank by assets, Standard Bank Group is in negotiations with Nigerian fintech company OPay ahead of the latter’s planned initial public offering (IPO) in the United States.
OPay is working with Citigroup, Deutsche Bank AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co to help list the company in New York, which is expected to take place later in 2026, according to Bloomberg.
The amount Standard Bank intends to invest and the stake it is seeking in OPay remain unknown as the fintech, backed by SoftBank Group Corp and Sequoia Capital, targets a US IPO valuation of $4 billion.
The potential investment in OPay followed Standard Bank Group’s disclosure that it plans to increase its investments in companies across Africa in June.
The lender said it would deploy $15.4 billion to tap opportunities in Nigeria and other key markets across the continent.
READ ALSO: Ecobank, Cornerstone Insurance, Africa Prudential top stock pick this week
Since it was created in 2018, OPay has grown into one of Nigeria’s largest digital financial platforms, offering payment, savings, credit and other financial services as a mobile money operator.
In previous years, it has expanded beyond Nigeria into emerging markets across Africa and Asia, including Indonesia, Pakistan, and Egypt.
OPay is one of Nigerian fintech companies, including Moniepoint and Flutterwave, that have raised funding through foreign means over the years to finance growth and expand their operations beyond the continent.
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