By Uzor Odigbo

The 21st Africa Senior Athletics Championship held in Asaba capital of oil rich State of Delta, South-South of Nigeria.
For five days, there was noise, jubilations, cheers and jeers coming from different quarters.
At championship venue, one noticed different kinds of Tag wearing individuals, but a careful look on most of the Tags read ‘LOC member Media’, LOC member Technical, LOC member Security and etc. One funny development was that, none of these tag wearing officials specially culled from the State ministry of information, Radio Delta and sports associations were on their duty posts.
Disorderliness in a championship such as the one witnessed in Asaba was not only when heads of committees were ignorant of their duties, it also has to do with putting unqualified persons incharge of sensitive duties like Media, protocol and ushering.
When next Nigeria intends to host a highly technical sports such as athletics, efforts should be made to promote professionalism. In a Championship where majority of officials cannot differentiate between athletics and football leaves much to be desired.
Asaba 2018 would have been more successful if greed, nepotism, sectionalism, selfishness and other mundane acronyms were gesttisoned by some officials who managed the championship. Business opportunities were lost because the right things were not discussed with the right people, right questions failed to come forth because some people  believed in hosting the world and go home empty.
When Kenya hosted similar championship years back, the CAA and the IAAF made tangible contributions to the host country and City which remained a legacy till today.
Of course, in the case of Asaba 2018, IAAF only addressed the hosting challenges Africa usually face in times like this. Nothing was said about, upgrading Nigeria’s athletes high performances centre in Port harcourt, Coaching Courses that would have attracted IAAF’s technical institutions to Nigeria as lagecy was lost.
Hosting the championship was a huge opportuity lost in putting the crisis riddled Athletics Federation of Nigeria to rest. The AFN came to Asaba in tatters and left without resolving lingering iusses of board members and its leadership working at different directions.
One have to commend the Delta State government for its timely damage control mechanism deployed quickly before calm was restored. Delta State commissioner for information Patrick Ukah knew early enough how abnormal things were turning into and waded in with his team.
Security was top notch in crowd control, technical depart received good report, but the media area got serious knocks as to say the least,  market women were hanging Media tags on their neck with press tribune looking hurrible without officials checking loose-canons and layabouts within local and visiting journalists. Controllers of mix-zones disappeared, journalists were on their own without control.
One of the many befitting lagecy in hosting the championship in Delta state happens to be the security of life and property. For the entire championship, there was no armed robbery case anywhere, public utilities like NEPA, Water works  and other security concerns in the state worked well.
Because of Asaba 2018, the consciousness of athletism in the minds of school pupils and students from higher institutions who watched the races for five days were raised and would not appear to dimish soon.
The Stephen Keshi Stadium is another good lagecy Asaba 2018 left behind as most businesses flourished within the period.
Now, is the time for Delta State Athletics Association to deploy its coaches and Games-masters to schools to catch them young. Millions was spent in putting the championship together, latching on opportunty created by hosting Asaba 2018 championship would be a huge plus.
The stadium remains an unfinished project, more works are needed in the area of mounting the score-board, flood lights, fixing the toilets properly, warm-up pitches and general upgrading of all facilities to make the edifice a complete master-piece