ALHAJI Bolaji Abdullahi, Minister for Sport and Chairman National Sports Commission (NSC), doesn’t do things by half measures. This is evident from the reforms carried out under his tenure as Education Commissioner in his home state, Kwara.
With his performances at the youth development ministry and currently at the sport ministry, it is safe to conclude that the future holds so much promise for him. Speaking exclusively with The Nation Sport & Style at the InterContinental Hotel in Dubai, a very relaxed Abdullahi revealed his best-kept secret after he might have been done with public service.
“I would like to preach after I’m through with public service and I’ve started preparing myself for that dream,” stated the 44-year-old erstwhile editor of Sunday ThisDay Newspaper, who is already working on a book titled Derailment.
“I want to share some of the knowledge that God bequeathed on me especially with the youths because I have seen that so many people failed to realise their potentialities in life as a result of so many factors.
“Of course, people often write on why people succeed but I have studied so many people and situations with the conclusion that many factors equally lead to derailment and I’m really enthusiastic about writing on derailment.
“I’m not going to disclose much on the book but I have started putting my thoughts together and I hope very soon, the book will be ready,” said Abdullahi who is a mentor to many youths.
Of course, writing comes naturally to Abdullahi with his background in journalism before entering public service, but he took it to another level when he wrote a 14-page letter to his daughter who is currently studying at Hull University in the UK. He noted that his idea about motivational speaking and preaching would be devoid of materialism with the sole objective of inculcating the right values into the coming generation of Nigerian youths and beyond.
“Though I have gone to Umrah (lesser Hajj) before, I recently went to Makkah and it was a new experience for me and it reinforced my belief in God, as such I want to rededicate myself in the service of God and humanity,” said Abdullahi who is a bookworm. “Yes, I love reading books and I have read so much despite my tight schedule as a minister.
“I’ve read lots of Islamic, Christian and Buddhist books and with the benefit of education, I know the best way to serve God. For instance, there is a marked difference between Islam and Christianity but the basis of religion is love towards God and your fellow human beings.
“I have read so many Christian books, particularly that of C.S Lewis and I was fascinated about some of the things he wrote in Mere Christianity. I’m equally thrilled by Francis Collins’ books, especially The Language of God. Collins is an American physician-geneticist noted for his discoveries of disease genes and Human Genome Project (HGP) and I love his symmetry between science and religion and perspective that belief in Christianity can be reconciled with acceptance of evolution and science.
“So, I’m more of a library person and I can be alone but not lonely because I always want to engage my thought-process thinking about complex situations.
“You can call me a solar-powered person because I work at best during the day and I hate to work at night. Besides the exigencies of work at my previous duty post, as a newspaper editor where you needed to stay up for production, I don’t like working or waking up at night to do anything. I just love to sleep at night. God has given us the day to work and night to sleep; so I make sure I enjoy both worlds – work in the day and sleep at night.”
Yet Abdullahi would be the first to admit that being a thorough-bred journalist and an erstwhile columnist to boot at ThisDay really prepared him well for the nitty-gritty of public life. Journalists are trained to ask questions and proffer solutions that could well help in the uplift of the society and he had to do some soul searching upon leaving the newsroom for the misty world of politics.
“Of course, being a journalist before joining public service has really helped me in settling down to the tedious work as an administrator because both are two different worlds,” he declared. “As a journalist, I wrote probing articles; asking questions just to arrive at a point where we can make the society a better place, but I found out it was not as easy as that because here you are with the hard fact staring you in the face.
“You are transposed from the world of idealism to reality and it challenges you to do your best and that has really become part of me. I strive to do my best in any circumstance knowing well that posterity would judge me for good or bad.”
Yet Abdullahi has earned plaudits for the manner he has dealt with some thorny issues in sports administration. Prior to his tenure, there were a thousand and one cases against the legality of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) so much so that the beautiful game of soccer was being played in the courtrooms than on the turfs of football pitches. Nigerian football suffered opprobrium and Abdullahi was one of the unseen hands as the Super Eagles broke their duck by winning the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) after a19-year hiatus. He ‘roughshod’ the NFF to ensure that the right players were picked for age-grade competitions and he could rightly claim a slice of the glory following the Golden Eaglets’ record-breaking fourth title at the 2013 FIFA Under-17 World Cup in the UAE last month. It was not only in football that Abdullahi’s impact had been felt; for the records, Nigeria is the continental champions in both the Under-18 and senior athletics championships in Africa. Under his watch, President Goodluck Jonathan launched Rhythm N’ Play – a grassroots programme aimed at bringing two million additional kids into sports – football, volleyball, basketball, netball, judo, karate, and athletics – over the next two years.
Said he: “The truth is that I love complex situations because it keeps my adrenalin pumping and I like to resolve problem which is one of the gifts that God gave to me.
“Of course, I’m not a hyper-active person because one other thing I enjoy doing is to have a good sleep. I really thank God for this inner peace because I can still have my good 7-8 hours of good sleep daily and there is nothing as life’s elixir as a good sleep.
“I like to be trim and fit and one of the things I don’t like to see is a protruding belly and that is why I love keeping fit. I love to look trim and fit though I was never a library person, sport-inclined during my days in school. I did some handball and some kick about in football too but I was more of a library person while growing up.”
As a grown up, Abdullahi noted that he is now good at wearing the traditional agbada and it is most plausible that you would catch him in this traditional gear at the weekly Federal Executive meetings more often than not ‘because I’m very comfortable in it.”
Though it’s been years now that he left journalism, he is still very much at home with his disarming tactics as the discourse almost ran its full course when pressed on his private life.
“Asking why I’m a polygamist is like asking why you choose to be a monogamist,” he said with a measured voice. “But there is nothing wrong in being a polygamist judging by my own experience and I’m frank with whatever I’m saying about this.
“ I have a very good and wonderful family and my children don’t speak about their mothers but our mothers because everyone in the family has a sense of belonging to the family. It goes without saying that being a polygamist gives you a great sense of fairness, justice and equity and I think a leader needs all of these to succeed. We are a closely-knit family and I really thank God for having such a wonderful family,” he stated.
