Nigeria’s deaf athletes have announced plans to stage another peaceful protest on Monday, October 26, over their exclusion from the forthcoming National Sports Festival, tagged the Coal City Games.
The athletes’ captain, Badmus Nurudeen, announced the planned protest at the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos, on Friday after the athletes waited for several hours for a meeting with Adeyinka Adeboye, Senior Special Assistant to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Grassroots Sports Development.
Nurudeen expressed disappointment over Adeboye’s failure to honour an earlier commitment, insisting that the athletes would not relent until deaf sports were reinstated in the festival. He lamented that many deaf athletes depend on sports for their livelihoods and to support their families.
“This means they want us to be stealing to feed our families. Many of us are married with children, and our only means of livelihood is sports,” he said.
He maintained that deaf athletes should not be treated as second-class citizens or discriminated against in national sporting events, adding that they often go from January to December without participating in a single tournament.
Nurudeen, however, urged the athletes to remain peaceful, warning them against taking the law into their own hands or resorting to violence. He explained that their decision to protest was aimed at drawing attention to their grievances through lawful means.
The athletes staged their first protest on Monday, October 19, when they blocked the entrance to the National Stadium at about 7 a.m. Adeboye subsequently met with them after the police invited him and promised to discuss the matter with the Director-General of the National Sports Commission, Bukola Olopade, and the President of the Paralympic Committee of Nigeria, Sunday Odebode. He also pledged to arrange a meeting with representatives of deaf sports on Thursday, October 22.
The Assistant Technical Director of the Nigeria Deaf Sports Federation, Emmanuel Audu, disclosed that this was the fourth time deaf sports had been excluded from the National Sports Festival since the federation was established in 1996.
According to Audu, deaf sports were made compulsory under a previous sports minister but were subsequently relegated to an optional category by the current administration, without any clear explanation.
He described the decision to exclude deaf sports while retaining para-sports events as discriminatory, questioning why athletes with other disabilities could participate while deaf athletes were left out.
“If para and deaf are both removed, fine. But para are there and only deaf are removed. That is discrimination against deaf people. Para events are very many, and no single deaf event is there,” Audu said.
He further alleged that deaf table tennis had been dropped from the festival even though the hearing and para-sports categories retained the event. This, he said, was despite an earlier assurance by Olopade that deaf sports would be included.
Lagos State deaf athletics coach, Lanre Agboola, also appealed to the authorities to end the recurring exclusion, noting that the athletes had been training daily since January in preparation for the competition.
“They should stop removing deaf sports from the festival. They should make it compulsory and no more optional,” Agboola said.
Meanwhile, deaf sports stakeholders staged a separate protest in Benin City, Edo State, on Monday, in a further demonstration of opposition to the exclusion.
The 2026 National Sports Festival, tagged the Coal City Games, is scheduled to take place in Enugu State from November 27 to December 11.
Join Inclusive News Network WhatsApp Community For Quick Access To News and Happenings Around You.