Youth and sports development minister, Sunday Dare, was spot on, on the bane of Nigerian sports for much too long: indifference to athletes when it’s not high sports season; total neglect, when the athlete is past his or her prime and retired. That seems to shape the new stipend-and-pension policy the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development is putting in place. It is a good one and it should be encouraged by all.
That Nigeria puts up a decent show at the All Africa Games, the continent’s prime sports fiesta, is due more to the surfeit of talents in a hugely populated country than any specific long-term planning. But that lack of planning is fully exposed at the global stage. That is why Nigeria has not really made much impact at the Olympic Games (the global biggest sports fiesta), or even the World Athletics Championships, the most elite athletics meet, organised by World Athletics (WA), until very recently called International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF).
The minister put Nigerian athletes’ off-season plight rather graphically, in a media interaction, on the sidelines of a two-day Inter-Ministerial Technical Session on Sports Industry Development: “Some of them,” he said of the athletes, “end up turning their cars to ‘Uber’ just to keep earning some money for upkeep. So by the time they have to compete, they pack their training programmes to three or four weeks. We lost,” he continued, “six months of doing nothing, no training to earn an income and then you pack your training for four weeks and then go on track with someone who has trained for nine months.”
At the Olympics, it is more like competing, for gold, against those who had been in constant and continuous training for eight years! Now, why would our athletes not fall short, as they always do, at almost every Olympic Games, with the possible exception of Atlanta Olympic Games of 1996, when through policewoman Chioma Ajunwa, Nigeria won its first individual Olympic Gold ever. But even the Chioma feat was less by any government meticulous planning but more by private sponsorship, thanks to ex-international Segun Odegbami, who put Chioma under his charge and secured, for her, training sponsorship.
That makes this pledge from the minister rather refreshing and reassuring: “We want to change that. We think that giving our athletes some incentives or stipend every month will help to keep them busy and also manage their time and training programme.”
The minister’s take on the welfare of retired athletes is even more welcoming, since many a Nigerian sports hero, in retirement, often end up as penniless and abandoned heroes: “After you have served this country (the athletes serve this country at the global stage, just as the civil servants who serve and get their pension), we think that athletes that have served this country, and have gone into retirement, should also benefit from the pension system.”
From the prism of pre-and post-performance athlete welfare, this planned stipend-and-pension policy is top notch. It is what Nigerian sports needs. If well implemented, other things being equal, it holds the key to flourishing athletics, in the near future. Still, it must be well defined; and it’s only the starting point to sustainable athlete funding.
First, the imperative for it to be well defined. The Nigerian bureaucracy is often notorious for sleaze. So, the first thing is to ensure the athletes’ stipend scheme is rigorously structured, such that it doesn’t become another slush fund that leaves the athletes holding the short end of the stick, while some seedy bureaucrats make illicit hay. The same goes for the pension scheme.
Still, a government-backed stipend for athletes is only the starting point. Since the sports ministry also caters for the youth, the minister should press the linkages between youth and sports, for athlete endorsements and the resultant training grants — at least for star athletes; and very promising juniors, who could be future world beaters. If businesses could envision their sales and services expanding as the sponsored athletes bloom, they would see a clear need for a win-win collaboration that translates into medals on the podium, and huge profit in the bottom line.
That should be the eventual destination. But for a good start, the minister should vigorously push his stipend-and-pension proposals. Nigerian sports would soar by it.
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