Nigerian Table Tennis Had Their Best Olympics Ever, But Their Sport Is in Danger

"Our government is trying to fight terrorism but in order to properly fight it, you have to understand the processes which have driven this mentality," Quadri Aruna said.

A few days earlier, Aruna became the first Nigerian table tennis player in Olympic history to reach the quarterfinals of the men's singles, losing only to the great Ma Long, world No. 1 and now a three-time Olympic gold medalist.

Aruna is desperate for greater investment in sports in his country, something he believes is crucial to dissuading disaffected youths from falling into the sway of organizations such as the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram.

"The young guys who choose this path, they do it because they don't have a job, they have nothing to do. They feel they don't have options," he continued. "But if there is more youth empowerment, employment, and things for them to aspire to, far less will turn to terrorism. After all, when you have something to do and a way of life, what reason do you have to kill somebody?"

Aruna's success has made him a hero back home, because in Nigeria, table tennis is huge. After soccer, it's the second most popular sport in the country, and the nation's table tennis stars—such as 42-year-old Segun Toriola, who made headlines for competing in his seventh successive Olympics in Rio—are celebrities with cult followings.

"Nigerian people have traditionally loved table tennis, as it's our only sport apart from football that you can actually play outside," said Olofunke Oshonaike, 40, who competed in her sixth Olympics in Rio. "I started playing on the dining table in the living room and from there you move to playing outside and there you can get discovered by talent scouts. If people see that you're very good, then you're invited to join a team and they will train you to become a champion."

All of Nigeria's greatest table tennis stars have been discovered through this street culture, which allows anyone to rent a table for an hour and play with proper equipment for a low cost. "There's no city you will go in Nigeria where you can't see people playing in the street," Toriola told VICE Sports. "There's a lot of love for the sport and that gets passed on."

For a long time, Nigeria has almost single-handedly maintained African pride on international table tennis stages. Rio 2016 has been a successful tournament for Nigeria, and many believe that Aruna, who is 28, could possibly push on to become Africa's first Olympic table tennis medalist at Tokyo 2020. But within the national team, there are fears that the country's proud culture in the sport, both as a leisure activity and professionally, is under threat.

Nigeria is currently undergoing its worst economic crisis in generations, devastated by plummeting oil revenues, which account for 90 percent of its hard currency earnings. In the capital Lagos, supermarkets are struggling to keep their shelves stocked; inflation has driven food prices through the roof and fuel is under strict rationing.

Two decades ago, Nigeria hosted eleven international table tennis tournaments a year. As a teenager, Oshonaike played for her state, which paid her secondary-school and university fees as part of a table tennis scholarship. Chinese coaches visited Nigeria every year as part of an arrangement between the two countries to nurture and develop the most promising Nigerian talent.

Today, things are very different. Now there are just three major tournaments in Nigeria, and table tennis funding from the government is minimal. Aruna has to self-fund to attend many events, picking and choosing his international tournament schedule extremely carefully; Oshonaike has almost quit the national team on multiple occasions due to lack of financial support.

Culturally, there have been changes too.

"Because of the internet, it's hard to get as many people playing outside on the streets," Oshonaike said. "The adults don't have time for table tennis anymore and the young kids would rather stay inside and play virtual table tennis on the Playstation or Xbox. When I grew up, we didn't have any of this technology so table tennis was how we had fun, socialized, met boys! Now the young girls today meet boyfriends on Facebook. But because of all of this, the talent pool is much thinner than it used to be."

Every Olympic nation faces the challenges of encouraging people to put down their phones and laptops and instead head to the pool or pick up a table tennis bat, but with fewer opportunities to see their country's stars compete live and with less funding for school and state tournaments, it has become harder to engage the Nigerian youth.

"The distractions of today's world are killing sport and table tennis in Nigeria," Oshonaike said. "Aruna is one of the few young athletes who is serious, disciplined, and dedicated enough to make the most of his talent. When I started, I wasn't after money—I just wanted to be a star in my country and to be good. But everybody nowadays is so money driven, so the young athletes are looking at that, first and foremost. But if you're going to be a champion, you can't be thinking about the money. You have to love it and you have to be obsessed with it. That's why China are the best in the world, because they literally eat table tennis, and they have the funding to train and compete internationally all the time."

Instead, Nigeria is in danger of seeing their bitter rivals Egypt eclipse them on the international scene. "We've always been top rivals," Oshonaike said. "In team events we normally beat them hands down. But they got hungry, they invested a lot, brought in Chinese coaches, brought table tennis into schools, and they have got so good. Apart from Aruna, we are way behind."

Aruna believes that one of the main problems in Nigeria is corruption in the sport's administration, which drains what little money could go toward reinvigorating the country's table tennis culture.

"The people running Nigerian sport need to be changed," he said. "They are not really doing their job. They prefer to put the money in their own pocket rather than into development programs like Egypt are doing."

The head of the Nigerian table tennis federation recently declared his ambition to turn things around and make table tennis the No. 1 sport in the country, overtaking soccer. "It's possible," Toriola said. "People don't really care about the Nigerian football league; they're interested in the English Premier League or Barcelona. But they care about how Nigerian table tennis players are doing. After we played China in the team event here in Rio, I had thousands of messages saying, 'Thank you for representing our country, you're doing a great job.'"

Aruna believes that the only way to turn things around is to find major sponsors who can put money into the sport and once again fund international competitions and Nigeria's leading players. If that happens, he believes the implications could extend beyond table tennis, as a way of providing Nigerian youth something to aim and aspire to.

"Without backing from sponsors putting the message out there, you don't find the youth engaging with sport," he said. "And so they engage with other things, perhaps ideologies which engage with them and they head down different paths. Twenty years ago, the Nigerian stars would play tournaments in our country where they were given free accommodation, free equipment, free transport, and free food. And when they see that, all the youth on the street really want to play, as they want that way of life. That creates a healthier culture for our country as a whole."

Oshonaike believes there is an opportunity for Nigeria to build on Aruna's success in Rio, but she remains unconvinced whether it will actually happen.

"His success has encouraged a lot of people back home," she said. "And he's a young guy, he's only 28. I think he can be greater than any other Nigerian table tennis player. All the youngsters in Nigeria are looking up to him. The 14-year-olds tell me, 'I'm going to train hard and win because I want to be like Aruna.' But we need actual investment to make any difference."

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