Who Gets to Participate in Sport? Nigeria Must Answer a More Fundamental Question

Who Gets to Participate in Sport? Nigeria Must Answer a More Fundamental Question

Sport is celebrated as a vehicle for development across Africa. But before counting medals and identifying champions, we should ask who gets the opportunity to play.

Sport is supposed to be for everyone. It builds confidence, improves health, creates communities and opens doors. Governments invoke its power to advance education, social inclusion and sustainable development. Across Africa, sporting success is celebrated as evidence of national potential.

But there is a question that too often gets lost in the celebration: who actually gets to participate?

In Nigeria, as across much of the sporting world, the conversation frequently begins with talent, international competitiveness and the investment required to develop the next generation of elite athletes.

These are legitimate questions. But they are not the first questions a serious sport-development strategy should ask.

A serious sport-development strategy must look beyond identifying champions and celebrating excellence. It should first establish how many children can play, who remains excluded and who actually benefits from sport.

The uncomfortable truth is that sporting talent and sporting opportunity are not the same thing.

Participation is not simply a choice

It is tempting to treat participation as an individual decision: people play sport if they want to, and they do not if they don't. But how free is that choice when facilities are inaccessible, equipment is unaffordable, transport is unreliable or schools cannot provide regular sporting opportunities?

Research from Nigeria gives us reasons to take these questions seriously.

A 2022 study by Ojedoyin and colleagues examined physical activity among 733 primary-school children in Lagos state. Using pedometers, the researchers found that 80.7% of boys aged six to nine met the activity guideline, compared with 64% of girls. That is a difference of 16.7 percentage points.

Let's be clear about what those numbers do and do not tell us. The study measured physical activity, not participation in organised sport. It does not establish how many children played for clubs, received coaching or competed regularly. Nor does a study in Lagos represent every child in Nigeria.

The early difference in physical activity points to unequal opportunities for boys and girls. As children grow older, disparities in encouragement, facilities, competition and coaching can determine who continues in sport and whose ambitions are abandoned before they can develop.

These are not marginal questions. They go to the heart of what a sporting system is designed to achieve. As Fred Coalter argues in Sport for Development: What Game Are We Playing?  Sport does not automatically produce positive social outcomes. Its impact depends on how programmes are designed, delivered and evaluated. In other words, putting sport on a policy document does not make it inclusive. Calling it developmental does not make it so.

What about women and girls?

Gender inequality in sport is often discussed in terms of representation at elite level: how many women make national teams, receive sponsorship or occupy leadership positions.

Those questions matter. But they risk obscuring a more fundamental issue: who gets the chance to participate in the first place?

Research by Anaza and McDowell into urban Nigerian women's recreational sport participation identified structural, interpersonal and personal constraints. The implication is important. Women's participation cannot be explained simply by claiming that women are less interested in sport.

Financial pressures, competing responsibilities, social expectations and the availability of appropriate provision can all influence whether participation is possible.

Afterwards getting through the door is only the beginning. Meaningful inclusion requires women and girls to remain involved, access coaching and competition, and progress into leadership not simply receive an initial opportunity that is difficult to sustain.

Nigeria has taken steps to improve women's representation in sports governance. Yet representation in a federation board is not the same as equal access to a playing field.

A sporting system cannot claim gender equality simply because women are visible at the top while barriers to participation remain insufficiently understood at the grassroots.

The test is not whether institutions say the right things about women and girls. It is whether opportunities, resources and support enable them to participate on equitable terms.

Inclusion: who the system leaves behind

The same scrutiny must extend beyond gender to disability, income and geography. Children with disabilities, families on low incomes and young people in underserved communities often face limited facilities, unaffordable organised sport and inadequate provision.

A 2026 study of 74 teachers in selected primary schools in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State in south-western Nigeria, found that 78.4% reported a lack of adapted sports equipment for children with disabilities. Some 82.4% identified fear of mockery or rejection as a barrier.

These are teachers' reported experiences in a limited number of schools, not national estimates. But they reveal the interaction between physical barriers, inadequate resources and social exclusion.

Consider what that means in practice. A school can announce a sports programme and claim that it is open to everyone. But what does that invitation mean to a child who cannot use the equipment, access the facilities or participate without fear of humiliation?

This exposes the difference between genuine inclusion and its mere appearance.

Inclusion requires more than allowing people through the door; it requires conditions in which they can participate, belong and continue.

The same principle applies to economic and geographical disadvantage, because a facility is meaningful only when it is affordable, accessible and available to the community it is intended to serve.

Sporting provision should therefore be judged not only by its existence, but by whom it actually serves.

The policy promises are there. Where is the evidence of impact?

Nigeria's sport-development agenda recognises grassroots participation, school sport and underserved communities. The African Union's 2023 Policy for the Sustainable Development of Sport in Africa also identifies inclusive participation and institutional capacity as priorities.

In April 2026, the AU convened a workshop in Abuja focused on aligning national policies, implementing its strategic plan and strengthening monitoring and evaluation.

That is a welcome direction. But a workshop is not an outcome, a policy is not implementation, and a commitment is not proof of progress.

A credible assessment must measure regular participation, differences between girls and boys, opportunities for disabled people, the distribution of resources to underserved communities and whether participants remain involved over time.

These questions require reliable data: The evidence examined here offers useful local insights into physical activity, school provision and disability inclusion. But it does not provide a sufficiently current, nationally representative picture of organised sport participation across Nigeria.

That is a serious limitation. Without comparable data on participation by sex, disability, income and location, it is difficult to establish the scale of inequalities, identify where resources are most needed or determine whether policies are working.

Sporting development must be assessed by more than the number of facilities built or programmes launched. What matters is whether people can use those facilities, who benefits from the programmes and whether exclusion is genuinely declining.

If governments cannot show who participates, who is left out and whether the gap is narrowing, on what basis can they claim that their sporting systems are becoming more inclusive?

Medals are not the measure of sporting development

None of this means that elite sport is unimportant. International success can inspire young people, create pathways and bring investment into a country. Participation and performance do not have to be competing objectives.

However, medals cannot tell us whether a country's sporting system is equitable. Nor can the emergence of a gifted athlete prove that the opportunities needed to develop talent are widely available.

A country can produce outstanding champions while other children never get regular access to sport. It can invest in facilities while leaving disabled people unable to use them. It can celebrate women athletes while failing to understand the barriers faced by girls who never enter a sporting pathway.

These are not claims that every Nigerian institution has failed. They are questions that any credible assessment of sport development must be able to answer.

Nigeria needs a stronger evidence base for participation, clearer accountability for implementation and sustained attention to the groups most likely to face barriers. That means measuring not only how much sport is delivered, but who can access it, who remains involved and who continues to be excluded.

The starting point for sustainable sport development should not always be the next medal, tournament or elite athlete. Sometimes it should be the child who wants to play but never gets the chance.

If sport is supposed to be a vehicle for development, the first measure of success should be whether people have a fair opportunity to take part. So, before we ask who will become Nigeria's next sporting champion, perhaps we should ask a more fundamental question.

Who gets to participate in sport and who is still waiting for the opportunity?