The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC’s) pidgin section raised the bar on sports journalism in Nigeria, Sunday when its correspondents covered how the four semi finalists at the Africa Women Championships held in Ghana were received back home after the tournament.
The video highlighted how Bayana Bayana was welcomed in South Africa, ditto Mali, not forgetting Super Falcons of Nigeria who landed at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, courtesy of the Presidency.
The heroines were excited to see the Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari at the airport. This lifted the girls’ spirits, but that isn’t the story today.
From the video footage, it was clear that the South Africans arrived home to a rousing reception, even without the trophy. The Malians were shocked at the reception they got, apparently because they were the fourth placed team. It didn’t matter to their nationals if they won the diadem or not. They were thrilled by their girls’ display.
The Malians were excited by the focus the girls brought to the country in the last two weeks, having to sit at home to watch the girls change the world view about Mali. Their players’ conduct captured the Malians’ spirit of participating in sports not just for the diadem.
South Africans had two footages to illustrate how elaborate theirs was. The Nigerian video showed a failure of leadership, with the government’s face in sports, missing. Nor were the ministry staff at the airport. There was also the disorderly manner in which the victorious girls were ushered out of the airport lounge, with the trophy serving as a reminder of who they were.
No fans; only a few Nigerians, apparently those using the airport. The dancing supporters were missing. No motorcade to usher the girls into the city. They stood aloof, waiting for others to join them outside before entering a white Coaster bus. They drove through the streets of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) unnoticed. What a country!
The South Africans got their post event ceremonies right because they run sports as a business not a recreational activity like ours. The Bayana Bayana side enjoys the same attention as the men’s team, Bafana Bafana. What they did underlined the need for all our national teams be marketed to the corporate world. It was a spectacular sight to watch on television as sponsors’ insignias adorned the airport. The look and feel was awesome.
Businesses are proactive not reactive like we have in our sports administration, which is peopled by folks who only know how to spend government money, which is cheap to get. But blue-chip companies have units whose duties it is to key into any marketing space to leverage on their products.
Since after the 2010 World Cup, which the South Africans hosted, their officials’ mindset has changed. Companies which identified with the business operations in the country in 2010 have extended their frontiers to other sports, chiefly because there is less government interference in the industry. Deals are struck transparently and agreements met with extant laws to punish defaulters as enshrined in the country’s constitution.
The sports ministry should stop the needless tussle for power between it and the associations since they are run by quarterly budgets which must be released to them. If the ministry feels that any association has not accounted for what it got, it should report the officials to the EFCC or ICPC. The ministry shouldn’t withhold associations’ cash because the players need it to prepare adequately for competitions. It is disheartening to read stories of unpaid allowances as if we didn’t know long enough to budget for them.
Our football teams are the biggest marketing brands to attract sponsorships, only if the government can get the National Assembly to pass the Act of Parliament for the NFF to be autonomous. The yearly trouble at the Glasshouse is a major disincentive for sponsorship, more so when the supervisory ministry repeatedly tells the public that the people there are corrupt instead of reporting them to the EFCC or the ICPC.
How do others do it? In other countries, there are various levels of sponsorship, with the Sports Trust Fund and the Sports Lottery schemes being the most popular. Cash is kept specifically for sporting events, since most of the competitions are held either annually, biannually or quarterly such as the Commonwealth Games, the World Cups and the Olympic Games. Indeed, producing talents to excel takes a minimum of six to eight years, using the Olympic calendar year.
The idea behind these initiatives is for the athletes to have all-year preparations based on when their competitions are scheduled. These countries don’t have to wait for their fiscal budgets to process the financial implications for such tournaments, since one major event dovetails into another.
Sports administrators don’t have to wait forever for their preparations. These schemes have technocrats whose duty is to ensure that the scheme bankrolls every event, with the government providing the backing, which the big players need to invest in the industry.
We believe that there are Nigerian ways of doing things. Otherwise, why have we jettisoned organising dinners with the President to raise funds for our athletes before major competitions? What happened to the previous Presidential Task Forces (PTF) and sports ventures hitherto headed by the late Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola and others? Could it be that some of those bodies couldn’t account for what they got from the blue-chip firms?
Sports cannot thrive with government funding. Our sports associations must be accountable to secure the confidence of the corporate world. Federations’ competitions should be sponsored and the talents discovered nurtured to stardom. If the sports ministry can work in tandem with the NFF, the body will soon be financially solvent to run its activities. The World Cup offers so much to the 211 affiliate federations. A classical example is the money which two Nigerian clubs will get from goalkeeper Ikechukwu Ezenwa’s presence at the Russia 2018 World Cup.
Despite not playing in any of the Eagles’ matches, Ikechukwu Ezenwa still fetched the country $237,720, which will be paid to both Enyimba and Ifeanyi Ubah through the Nigeria Football Federation. Under the Club Benefits Programme, USD 209 million will be paid to 416 clubs from 63 member associations. This represents a significant increase of almost 200 per cent compared to the previous editions.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino noted that the clubs deserved to share in the success of the competition as they were key contributors to the World Cup.
“The FIFA World Cup is the pinnacle of football, generating passion and emotion from every player and every fan in every corner of the world. It is FIFA’s responsibility to redistribute the revenues of this unique competition among the entire football community, and clubs, obviously, deserve to share in this success as they were key contributors.
“I’m very pleased to see that teams from so many different regions will benefit from this programme, which will help to develop football even further around the globe,” said Infantino.
We need to refocus our developmental programmes if we hope to get the best from our sports ambassadors. Thursday’s reform committee’s agenda is commendable. I hope that the members’ submissions are not jettisoned on the altar of politics.
“Our dream is to make Nigeria football better and we acknowledge that there is a missing link and correcting this missing link will help put Nigeria football on the right pedestal. I want to assure the committee that we will implement the recommendations of the committee to the letter because we need to create a football economy that will outlive us,” Amaju Pinnick said.
He went on: “I want to charge the committee to bury their hatchet and work together as a team for the good of Nigeria. To right the wrong in our football, harmonious relationship must be ensured by the committee members. We must put away our personal interest and work for the good of Nigeria football and I am really happy to have the quality of people in this committee. These are Nigerians that are passionate about football and we must all work for the common interest of making Nigeria football a bride to the world.”
“This committee is committed to progressive change because stakeholders want change and the time has come for us to catch up with the rest of the world. This committee will be unique and everybody will be involved in the outcome and that is why we must all see ourselves as change agents that will leave a legacy for generations unborn. We must be ready to change how things are done in the past and use benchmark from various successful nations to carry out this reform,” NFF Vice President and Chairman of the Reforms Committee Seyi Akinwunmi said.
Before now, there had been many reform committees, such as the SO Williams Sports Reforms committee in the 1980s, the Amanze Uchegbulam committee on age-graded football activities of 1999, the Emeka Omeruah Committee of 2004 and another one some years back which recommended the formation of a domestic Court of Arbitration for Sports to avoid the administrative and legal logjams that almost strangulate football administration in the past four years.
The immediate past sports minister, Tammy Danagogo had four years ago called for a Nigerian Court of Arbitration for Sports as being necessary to settle the recurring disputes and civil court cases in football that have put the Nigeria at loggerheads with FIFA.
Reforms cannot happen when both bodies are working at cross purposes.
