Sports Minister Solomon Dalung is very busy. He is so occupied with the youth affairs arm of his job that he forgot that it wasn’t his duty to apologise for Nigeria’s ouster from the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations. Not different from others before him, he summoned the NFF to explain why the Super Eagles failed after his apology. He should have done this first, then ask the NFF men to apologise to Nigerians. NFF must convince Dalung on everything that they do.
Dalung is too busy to take firm decisions that affect sports. The result is what we have in our hands today, with the fresh crisis at the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF). We are courting FIFA ban, except the minister calls the party in court to order. The minister can now see why he shouldn’t have resurrected a case that had been thrown out by the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS), delisted in the law court and some of those in the trouble-making NFF board are in the board that some want sacked? So, who are the members of this trouble-making group?
We had a Nigerian contingent to the last All African Games whose athletes were tainted with drugs, who are roaming free on the street, despite the shame they brought to the country. These drug cheats’ crimes are not bigger than our ouster from the Africa Cup of Nations. Not a word from the minister nor has any panel been constituted to probe how the athletes spiked their systems with drug. Nor is the minister worried about a repeat of the show-of-shame, if the culprits are not punished. It doesn’t matter, after all their medals have been allotted to the rightful winners. Is this the first time it has happened to a Nigerian contingent? What a shame, if this is the perception of those whose duty it is to chart a way forward for the country in sports.
We are going to the Olympics in August; who are the coaches? What are we telling the athletes who want to win medals at the Games about ingesting banned drugs? Do we have a history of our athletes’ feeding habits and medicals? When last were our athletes to the Olympics tested for drugs? Or do we want to drag our image in the mud like some countries are doing because they failed to abide by the doping rules? Well, is anyone shocked at the inertia shown to the drug cheats? Not with the dismissive manner in which Dalung supported the reasons why the National Sports Commission (NSC) was scrapped when he spoke at the National Assembly.
Said the minister: “I asked the National Assembly members, when they accused me of scrapping NSC, if they were aware that sport is not legislated in Nigeria. They were looking at me and wanted to know if the billions they were appropriating to NSC and NFF were illegal. I was assertive and said that is left for them to determine.
“I am an executive. I don’t make law; I implement law. NFF is one of the decisions I inherited.”
He went on: “In law, any legislation that never receives the attention of government is dead. There is no law backing NSC and I did not see it when I arrived as the minister as the product of the merger of two ministries.”
Whose job is it, honourable minister, to start the process of getting the NFF and the NSC to be backed by the laws of the land beyond the scrapping of the latter? Perhaps, but for the fear of FIFA, NFF too could have been scrapped, following the minister’s submission. Now that the NSC has been scrapped, does it make the NFF known to the law, given your reasons for scrapping the NSC?
Even with his busy schedule, Dalung was the first to inform everyone that NFF wanted to appoint a foreign manager, insisting that he needed to be convinced about this adventure, even when he told SuperSports channel that the quest for a European manager in the Eagles won’t happen under his reign. True, NFF has had issues with coaches, players and officials. But, is the federation adequately funded? How can a body which funds 11 national teams be solvent, where most of its expenditure is done in foreign currencies? How much is the naira to any of these – pound, dollar, Euro?
But would the NFF be the first sports federation to recruit a foreign manager to turn their teams’ fortunes for the better? When Basketball Federation recruited a foreigner (William Bryant Voigt), the dunking game witnessed a new dawn. We overcame our nemesis Angola in the male category. The girls are on the verge of qualifying for the Olympics like their male counterparts. Our boys are at the Olympic Games for the second consecutive time. Under Voigt, Nigeria won the Afrobasket (the equivalent of the Africa Cup of Nations) for the first time. It has taken the presence of a foreigner to restore confidence in our basketballers, even when many of them play in the home of the dunking game – United States of America (USA).
Our table tennis players did well with their European clubs, yet they couldn’t conquer the Egyptians. The Table Tennis Federation boss, Enitan Oshodi, in his wisdom, recruited a foreign coach. Today, Nigeria has toppled Egypt as African kings. Aruna Quadri is the best African table tennis player for men. Our boys and girls in the junior categories are creating upsets against big names in ping pong, a rarity when we were stuck with our domestic coaches.
One lesson from these two examples is that the game is dynamic. Indeed, coaching has left the realm of appointing ex-internationals as coaches. It is now a function of man-management, teaching the players the latest tricks of the sport and ensuring that they are properly psyched up before competitions. Expatriate coaches don’t call for prayers before a competition. Their templates for success are flexible, depending on the trends of the game. Their training methods are scientific, not the rustic type our local coaches adopt which border on exploiting our players’ physical features and power. Sport now is more of how athletes use their intelligence to outwit their opponents than brute force. Sport is anchored on systems meant to exploit the opponent’s lapses to win matches. It isn’t guess work like our coaches seem to think. It isn’t a function of luck like our coaches assume.
Dalung has celebrated our wrestlers’ feats, even when they left the country without proper funding. It has taken Daniel Igali’s expertise and pedigree in the game, which he acquired wrestling for Canada where he won an Olympic gold medal for our wards to grab the Rio 2016 Olympic Games’ tickets. Igali joins the wrestlers to train. Surprised? Don’t be because Igali is a former Olympic Games gold medalist. Wait for it – fighting for Canada. We can invariably call Igali a foreign coach, having harnessed his skills as a Canadian wrestler back in the days.
As the dictum goes, you cannot give what you don’t have. Igali and the two foreign coaches mentioned impacted knowledge to their wards because they went through the grill that made them what they are today.
Honourable sports minister, sir, football is just one medal at the Olympics. Athletics is one of the multi-medals events, yet no one knows if Blessing Okagbare’s preparations have been paid for. I’m sure the minister cannot tell us how many medals we are expecting at the Olympics, now that the former supervisor of the country’s Olympic Games’ athletes has been demoted and sent to the ministry of Niger Delta.
Interestingly, the crossfire between Dalung and the former NSC Director-General, Alhassan Yakmut, won’t augur well for the industry, especially as it concerns getting the business community to identify with sports. If there were issues, they ought to have been settled in-house, not in the media. I don’t like putting the minister on the spot but it appears he sees sports from the prism of football, which isn’t good for the growth of the industry.
Some volleyball players were hauled out of a hotel outside the country. Their belongings littered the streets. No word was heard from the sport’s chiefs. Nor did anyone bother to authenticate the story at the Sport Ministry with a view to averting a repeat of the shameful act. If it was in football, heaven would have come down.
Not again, Wenger
It is true that the Olympic Games isn’t one of the competitions where European clubs are compelled to release foreign nationals to play for their countries. Most European managers have used this alibi to destroy developing countries’ plans, such as ours -to rule the Olympic Games’ soccer event.
Interestingly, Arsenal’s manager Arsene Wenger feels strongly that any young boy who has broken into his country’s senior side shouldn’t be asked to participate in age-grade tournaments such as the Olympics. This is why he stopped Nwankwo Kanu from an encore Games appearance at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Wenger’s decision contributed largely to Nigeria’s absence from the final game in 2000. Had Kanu made the Nigerian side, given the fact that he was still very hot, we would have played in the finals. At that stage, anything is possible.
Wenger is up with his antics again. He wants to stop Alex Iwobi from playing for Nigeria at the Rio 2016 Olympics because it would stop the Nigerian kid from participating in Gunners’ opening matches next year. It also means that Iwobi won’t be part of Arsenal’s pre-season preparations, which most European managers don’t toy with – it serves as the only opportunity to get the players fit for the new season.
We are stuck with one of Wenger’s philosophies like we were in 2000. One only hopes that Iwobi would be able to persuade Wenger to free him for the Olympics the way Lionel Messi did with Barcelona at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. Iwobi would be a wonderful addition to the Dream Team VI. I also hope that Iwobi can include in his new deal a clause that would make it mandatory on Arsenal to free him to play for Nigeria whenever there is a clash in fixture or interest like we have now.
This is the time for the NFF to establish a relationship with Arsenal and Wenger. It is the only way to resolve this matter. We can assure Wenger that Iwobi won’t be injured during the Olympics. But can we really guarantee that?
“We have to respect his choice. He had the choice between England and Nigeria and in the end he chose Nigeria,” Wenger told reporters at Thursday’s press conference, according to arsenal.com.
“We respect that, and also the possibility that he will go to the Olympic Games, that he will also go to the Africa Cup of Nations and travel a bit more than he would have done here. We have to respect that.”
Can we believe Wenger? Let’s wait and see.
