Afuze: The unknown Olympic Games Village

Once the pride of the nation, the world-class Afuze Olympic Games Village, built in 1974, has virtually turned to home of reptiles and rodents, as the facilities have been abandoned and overgrown with weeds for over two decades.

It was a harsh and chilly Harmattan evening, when our correspondent arrived at Afuze, the headquarters of Owan East Local Government Area in Edo State, on January 26.

Unknown Olympic Games Village

I beckoned on a commercial motorcyclist to take me to the Olympic Games Village in the quiet town. But to my dismay, none among the horde of motorcyclists knew the place.



“Where is that in Afuze? There is nowhere like that here,” one of them said. Some of the residents I also enquired about the place from didn’t know about it.

It was appalling that nobody in the community knew about the Olympics Games Village, built by the former Governor of the defunct Midwestern Region Brigadier-General Samuel Ogbemudia (retd.) in Afuze on a surveyed land measuring 146,998 hectares along with the Afuze College of Physical and Health Education, which was opened by ex-military ruler Gen. Yakubu Gowon (retd.) on January 20, 1974.

The place was initially meant to train and prepare the state’s athletes ahead of the National Sports Festival, which began in 1973 to promote unity in the country after the Civil War. The athletes were meant to reside in the games village, made up of small housing units, while they would use the top-class facilities in the college of physical and health education, in training.

In the late 1980s, it was learnt that the Federal Government took over the place, to train national athletes ahead of global competitions.

So, I proceeded to the Michael Imoudu College of Physical and Health Education, formerly the Afuze College of Physical and Health Education. There, I enquired about the Games Village from a member of staff.

“Nobody in Afuze knows the place as the Olympic Games Village. It has long been abandoned and has now been converted to a low-cost housing estate. So, just tell the motorcyclists that you are going to Low-Cost (Housing) and they will take you there,” he said.

Games Village turns home of reptiles

On getting to the entrance of the ‘Low-Cost Housing’, there was nothing to depict that the serene environment once had anything to do with sports in the past, or had even camped some of Nigeria’s best athletes ahead of global competitions, apart from a large expanse of land taken over by bush, with some of the abandoned housing units, either crumbled or inhabited by the locals despite their poor state.

On entering the compound, our correspondent saw an old woman with a teenage girl scampering for dear life and speaking frantically in the local dialect. Suddenly, a young man with a cutlass appeared and started chasing a green snake round the kitchen built with zinc, behind one of the abandoned houses.

Eventually, he killed the snake to the relief of the old woman and the little girl. The people took over to take care of the place.

When our correspondent enquired from the old woman, who identified herself as Mama Omua, how often reptiles invaded the place, she said, “They (snakes) come in day and night and it’s by God’s grace that we have survived. This one is not big; we have killed so many bigger snakes than this here.”

Augustine Ohimai, a lecturer at the MICPHE, who resides inside the games village, admitted that reptiles and rodents were constant threats to the lives of inhabitants of the place.

“We use all sorts of rat and snake poisons here to prevent reptiles and rodents from causing danger. We also try to keep our environment very clean,” he said

TANA AIYEJINA