According to the reports released by FIFA, the total prize money for the FIFA World Cup 2026 will be $896 million for the men’s event. Hmmmm! Who won’t go for it? At the least to have a bite from the Cherry. Any right-thinking group would stop at nothing to get an expert briefing on how to get one of the big banks to do business with them and how best to prosecute a seamless campaign for the 2026 World Cup, where for qualifying for the competition, every qualifying nation gets $12 million as a qualification bonus.
These figures are mouth-watering for those who know how to make money, not those who lavish cash on nonsense or rely on government money, which is cheap and, most times, unaccountable. Only planless groups watch in awe or scratch their heads when the results of matches go awry. It becomes a tale of the unexpected. We have come to accept these mistakes as the norm despite Nigeria’s six (1994, 1998, 2002, 2010, 2014, and 2018) appearances at Senior World since our debut in 1994 in the United States (US).
Our sports administrators are suffering from poverty of ideas for the good of the beautiful game here. Rather than get people to think for them, they prefer to stew in their mess. Pity. I was at the Atlanta’96 Olympic Games and one of the few in Nigeria who waited to see the outcome of the women’s long jump before heading for Georgia to watch the Dream Team 1’s crucial game. A classmate at the Government College Ughelli, who I had not seen since 1976, offered to drive a few of us to watch the football game.
With a car on standby, we watched Chioma Ajuwa leap to glory for Nigeria with a gold medal in a field of world beaters in the women’s story. Goose pimples still run through me, watching Ajunwa trot towards a little girl holding the Nigeria flag to pick it up and continue her lap of honour for medallists. I won’t blame our sports chiefs who chose to travel early for the Dream Team 1 game. What Ajunwa did was magical. It changed the narrative among people, having been tagged a pariah nation due to the devious acts of the goggled one in that inglorious jackboot era of administration.
Travelling aboard a Greyhound bus all through the night from Atlanta to Philadelphia after the Olympics was joyful as everywhere one went in Philly, the atmosphere changed the moment one was linked to the Games. Spontaneously, you would hear from appreciative Americans and other nationals present ”Nigeria. Kanu, Amokachi, Jay Jay Okocha e.t.c.” Not forgetting photo shots with them as if one bore any of the names mentioned.
Yes, sports is the biggest Public Relations (PR) tool any government can use to change people’s negative perception of any nation free of charge.
Lottery schemes for funding such things concerning athletes’ welfare, career path growth, healthcare needs, planning such athletes’ future, etc. Others address their monetary problems for sports ambassadors through trust funds specifically for such needs, not otherwise.
Those who run our football are either too forgetful (forgive me, please), or they intentionally cast an indulgent eye to imminent pitfalls ahead, only to say when such problems arise, ”But I warned earlier, you thought you knew it all.” This is the premise of all issues not only football but all the sports federations. The question to the federations is to plead with the National Sports Commission (NSC) to raise a memo to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to approve a sports budget which would ensure that all requests are accommodated on a four-yearly schedule or a two-year or even one-year to cater for all their needs. The question would be how do other countries run their sports without such hitches?
It is an insult to pay Super Eagles stars $1,000 for beating Rwanda in Kigali. What can $1000 do for them? I’m sure the boys would have played for free instead of what they were paid weeks after the game. I hope when the players start to skip matches on flimsy grounds or collaborate with their European clubs to feign injuries, we will know where we courted the problem(s). Our administrators are poor students of history.
We are in a tight corner. Rather than motivate the players with cash to be at their best, we are offering them what they won’t give to their friends. All countries reward their players handsomely. It is the reason they leave their clubs to play for their countries whenever there is a clash of fixtures with their national teams. Does it make any motivational sense for a sane player to leave his club and fly aboard the aircraft for between six to nine hours to Nigeria only to be paid $1,000? Who does that? Imagine what those boys go through for away fixtures taking cognisance of what the Libyans did to them, only to hear on their phones the alert sound for $1,000. What do the accompanying big men earn as estacodes or is it per diem?
Let’s be fair. The lifespan of athletes is between one year and ten years, barring injuries. Therefore, they need to save for their future. It is the reason clubs splash big cash to sign them. No player would leave a club where he is sure of the three points which could fetch him between $30,000 and $50,000 for a Nigerian assignment to be paid $1,000 after nine weeks. It won’t happen, especially seeing former Nigerian players languishing in penury. Nothing is free even in Freetown.
How do you give Victor Osimhen $1000? How do you go from paying these players $10,000 for away victories to that paltry $1,000 fee and we want the boys to fight and qualify for the World Cup? We are NOT going anywhere. How much were the NFF officials paid for just travelling to watch the players while they sweat under harsh climatic conditions representing Nigeria? Is it not true that FIFA would pay us above $12000 for qualifying as a qualification bonus? So, why are we paying the players peanuts? Maybe the NFF should learn from other federations.
The countries that excel in sporting events have systems that guarantee enough funds for the sportsmen and sportswomen to compete with the best such as tax rebates on sport-friendly firms, lotteries, and businesses owned by wealthy nationals who know what is in such a sponsorship that benefits them by the sitting government. Such financial taxes are spelt out to companies and wealthy citizens after agreements have been reached. These cast-in-stone policies are binding to all the parties to such an extent that breaches are adequately addressed to allow either of the parties to seek redress in court.
The beauty of this organised method of funding is it gives all the concerned sponsors enough time to schedule their commitments to their operative management boards to provide for them in the yearly budgets for the duration of the contractual agreements with reliant government parastatals for the exercise.
For Nigeria to achieve excellence and meet the objective requirement for the rapid development of our sports industry, then we must broaden the finance base of the industry and create the right conditions for private sector funding and investment in sports. But, the government must lead this movement by doing away with the fiscal budgets and introducing a sports budget that takes care of the annual, biannual, and quarterly sports competitions such as the World Cup, the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games e.t.c without qualms.
What do you think, dear reader? You tell me.
