A new opportunity

Bidding to host FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup is a golden chance to retool, maintain and put Nigeria’s stadia to a more productive use

Not a few have queried: with everything considered, on the balance of focus and preference, isn’t bidding for FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup a misplaced priority?  Not exactly.

For starters, that question is outdated — as outdated as regarding sports as “extra-curricular” activity in schools.  That is outdated thinking, for sports, by current thinking, is regarded as integral to the learning and development processes of a child; and even to the maturity and all-round wellness of the adult.

So, taking it from that more robust perspective, bidding to host the FIFA U-20 Women’s World is neither a waste nor misplaced priority.  That the tournament is for young women even further makes its case, as putative empowerment tool, for a gender against which almost everything is skewed; but which progressively has to take on more economic responsibilities, with the tanking economy.

Besides, the World Bank disclosed that Nigerians living abroad repatriated home US$ 22 billion in 2017.  It is not clear what fraction of this figure came from sports persons.  But given the armada of Nigerian footballers and other sports persons abroad, the share might not be minute.  The other day, Barcelona ace, Asisat Oshoala, in Lagos, held a house warming party, to “open” the big and modern house she just built for her parents.  That house must have cost millions of Naira.  That was legitimate proceed from sports.  It shows if local sports is well organized, thousands of youths can live from it, as Nigerian sports folks abroad, like Asisat, now do.

So, even if some cash would be invested in readying facilities for the competition, particularly in the eight stadia, in different localities within Nigeria’s vast territory, these resources would have been well deployed, should they signal a fresh start  — a fresh start in unleashing, and fully maximizing, the returns from sports, as an integral part of the new diversified economy; particularly for Nigeria that has teeming youths, crying to be productively engaged.

Still, it is on the score of hosting global fiestas to boost sports as a decent economic earner, that the hosting bid can be seriously questioned.

Do you remember Nigeria ’99?  It was a double whammy: Nigeria hosted the African U-17 championships, to precede the FIFA U-17 World Cup.  It was at that African championship that Coach Fanny Amun, faced with harsh criticism against his team, blurted they would “fumble and wobble to the final”.

For those twin-fiestas, the Federal Government spent a lot of money re-tooling the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos, re-grassing that edifice, rehabilitating its media centre, toilets, and generally sprucing it up.  The other seven stadia – in Ibadan, Enugu, Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi, Port Harcourt and Calabar — also received prompt attention.  But how are these stadia faring today?

For starters, the National Stadium Lagos, has become a once-upon-a-stadium, given how blighted its once iconic main bowl now is.  For the others, it is doubtful if the country really got the full return on investment, on the cash spent to refurbish them, for Nigeria ’99.  Even the Onikan Stadium, hurriedly made-up as make-shift host of the Lagos matches, for the African U-17 arm of Nigeria ’99, with renovation works going on in National Staduim, had also become pathetic, before former Governor Akin Ambode pulled it down to rebuild it all over.

Ten years later, Nigeria 2009 also came on stream, with the country, fresh from winning the FIFA U-17 World Cup in South Korea (in 2007), again hosting the U-17 World Cup.  By that time, the National Stadium, Lagos, refurbished only 10 years earlier, had turned a virtual desert.  It didn’t even come into contention as host.  Rather, it was the Teslim Balogun Stadium (TBS), just across the road in the Surulere neighbourhood, that hosted the Lagos matches.

Even then, the National Stadium, Abuja, now named after Moshood Abiola – fresh, new and a rave of everyone — headed the facilities to host Nigeria 2009.  Sadly today, that stadium’s main bowl has become another glorified maize farm, from utter neglect.  Other stadia, across the country,  also benefited from Nigeria 2009: Enugu, Ijebu Ode, Kano, Calabar, Kaduna and Bauchi. But it is doubtful if these facilities have since then been maximized for sports use, thus justifying those investments in them.

That is the sorry tale, as Nigeria again bids to host another global championship.  This editorial’s opener has justified such a bid, despite even scarcer resources, since it holds the promise for sports as a vibrant part of a diversified, new Nigerian economy, beyond just petroleum.

But that vision cannot be fulfilled, if the aftermath of the championships is trapped in our old experience of facility under-utilization, neglect, ruin and eventual waste.

Aside, while hosting the football event would be the front, powering the show would be good transportation and tight security.  No hosting can be successful except these two areas are in top shape.  That is another challenge on which the government must convince FIFA, before the country can earn the hosting right.  Again, if the hope to host can galvanize rapid improvement on both scores, it would have been a win-win for everyone.

So, should Nigeria earn the right, and go ahead to host the games, it would be a waste indeed, were the refurbished stadia left to rot again.

But if the story changes, and the hosting becomes the take-off point, where local football, and other sports, begin to take their place, and provide sustainable nourishment for all their stakeholders, then it would be a new dawn.

That dawn of promise would have woven sport as integral to the economy.  Then, the government can earn bountiful tax; and athletes and sports administrators too, earn bountiful living.