It appears we have left sports in the lurch, if one takes a critical look at the 21 nominees for the ministerial positions in the Muhammadu Buhari government. There is no doubt another set of ministerial appointments to be made. But I feel strongly that sports ought to have come with the first batch with months to 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil and other top tournaments.
The names published in the newspapers don’t look like people to be assigned to sports, given their pedigree. Perhaps, the president would shock me by announcing Babatunde Raji Fashola (SAN) as the new sports minister. Did I hear you say in my wildest dream? Don’t blame me. Fashola took sports to the zenith in Lagos. Fashola understood the dynamics in sports. He created the platforms for sports in thrive in the Centre of Excellence.
He gave Lagos a credible face that emboldened the corporate world to identify with sporting events in Lagos. Fashola found the time to play football at the late Teslim Balogun Stadium. This further convinced the blue chip firms to support sports in Lagos. With the corporate bodies providing the cash, Lagos returned to its glorious past of being the Mecca for sports in the country. Lagos had a sports calendar that many people followed. Fashola ensured that Lagos discovered, nurtured and exposed talented athletes drawn from the hinterlands at the National Sports festival. He told his officials to jettison the poaching of athletes from other states syndrome that some desperate governors opted for to win the multi-sports events.
The effect of no poaching by Lagos ensured that the indigenes formed the nucleus of the state’s contingent unlike in other states where Adekunle Oluwasegun, for instance clinched 10 gold medals for Rivers State and Abubakar Abubakar win medals for Edo State.
Another ripple of no poaching is that the medalists returned to the homes, schools, churches, mosques and play grounds as heroes and heroines. They served as models for others in the communities to emulate with some parents urging their kids to take to sports.
Fashola understood the essence of the multi-sports competition- to get younger talents to replace the ageing ones and to strive to upset the established stars. Today, the sports facilities built and rejuvenated by Fashola warehoused most of the athletes Nigeria paraded at the All African Games trained before heading for Brazzaville.
Besides, Fashola anchored the new dawn in Lagos sports on credible and distinguished Nigerians such as the late Molade Okoya- Thomas and Mr Olawale Edun. Both men instituted the right attitude and mentality in the way sports is run. Today, Nigerians are celebrating new boxers who shone at the All African Games without recourse to the Lagos Boxing Hall of Fame project which laid the foundation that threw up the medalists.
Moribund sporting facilities were rebuilt. It is unfortunate because the one sphere that unites us a one nation is sports. It is only during sporting competitions that Nigerians forget about ethnicity, religion and political divides.
These administrators must be tasked to take each game to any part of the country with the best comparative advantage to produce the athletes who must then be taught the rudiments of the game at the grassroots. The criteria for picking administrators for each sport should include having the passion for the game. It is only when a person is passionate about a sport that he can appreciate the need to continuously provide new ideas to develop it.
A blueprint is sacrosanct for sports to thrive and it must be anchored on the dire need to resuscitate moribund grassroots competitions that engaged youths, taking them away from the vices of the society.
The emergence of a sports policy endorsed by the government will create jobs, such that this industry could in the next 10 years become the highest employer of labour.
The policy should challenge local government chairmen to build at least four mini-sports centres that would serve as playgrounds for their constituents in the absence of such structures in the schools in the 774 local government areas.
Multiply four mandatory mini-sports centres by 774 local governments, what you get (3,096 mini-sports centres) would set the platform for the industry to grow. Blue-chip companies will then leverage their products and services on this enterprise since their target audience are the masses who will throng the centres to watch competitions.
The spiral effect of blue-chip firms identifying with this new initiative is that the local government areas could recoup their investments because they could offer to name these facilities after the firms alongside other marketing windows that the initiatives offer, such as kitting and moulding the career paths of athletes discovered to stardom.
Wealthy indigenes will queue up to patronise sports, recruiting the locals as coaches, athletes, grounds men, drivers, cleaners, security personal, doctors and other institutional staff in their outfits. If each of the 774 local governments employ 50 people for each of the mandatory four mini-sports centres in the proposed pilot scheme, the employment rate in the hinterlands will reduce.
Perhaps we need to re-introduce the zonal sports offices in the six geo-political zones and equip them with coaches and office personnel who should be monitored just as the coaches must be retrained. Those who are not productive should be eased out of the system.
These rebuilding processes would produce incontrovertible data base for the talents discovered. And it would help sports develop since athletes won’t be able to forge ages to play for the junior teams.
But how did we get to this pitiable situation? Greed and selfishness of those who administer sports put us on this inglorious path. They refused to build on the gains of the past. They introduced quota system. Sports facilities were left to decay. Nepotism formed the fulcrum for picking coaches, officials and athletes. That would have been okay, if they performed. But these people failed woefully.
Unpopular governments in Nigeria, especially during the jackboot eras used sports as their biggest public relations tool to seek acceptance.
In other polities, sports industry is big business. It is a money spinner. It is used to empower the people. It engages the youth and takes them off societal vices. Sports create the platforms for the people to recreate. Being engaged in sporting events improves the health and living standards of citizens.
And so people rebuilding sports are most times tested technocrats and renowned athletes who have graduated from the fields to the board rooms.
Such novel choices when made get global applause from other countries because with such a person, a truly new dawn beckons for the industry. Anytime, we appoint a sports minister, he starts by wrestling for power at the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), leaving more than 26 other sports in the lurch. This explains why our facilities are in ruins. Ministers measure their achievements by the success records.
Yet, the National Sports Commission (NSC), which most ministers and director generals operate is not known to the law. These twosome have played politics with the abrogation of Act 101, because it gives the minister the powers to interfere in NFF’s affairs.
I look forward to the day we will get a minister who will complete the process of abrogating Act 101. I look forward to seeing a minister who will run sports through the schools, polytechniques and universities. Sport is for the youths. They are found in the schools.
I recall those days at Government College Ughelli, when we returned to the school as winners of the 1977 edition of Morocco/ Clarke Cup. Our mates at school trooped out to receive us. We felt like kings. We were celebrated by the principal the late Demas Onoriode Akpore. It was a very rare privilege. I treasure those moments to date.
This scenario underscores the importance of what renowned sports journalist and the Vice President, International Sports press Association, Mitchel Obi told a gathering recently in Lagos.
Obi said: “Allow the private sector to come in to set the tone with entrepreneurial skills, then it becomes huge business. Imagine what it means if every week people go into the stadium to enjoy a good match; the impact and effervescent effect for the nation. Consider those who transport the fans, those who sell to the fans, produce wares for the fans, those who produce the tickets, the telephone companies that would gain from it, especially in this telecommunication age, where if you are in the stadium, you want to tweet it, take pictures and post on the social media, it is all so complex. That is why we are saying that sports is a catalyst to recover from the economic recession that the country is experiencing. But that is if we understand it.”
The Progressive Vanguard stated that: “President Buhari must not set a bad precedent by not appointing a Sports Minister; the decision will also jeopardize the revival of the now moribund industry. Our industry is comatose. We need a tripartite marriage between the Ministries of Education, Youths and Sports to revive the industry. If we don’t have a Minister of Sports, that means there won’t be cabinet representation for Sports, thus there won’t be interaction between Ministers of Youth and Education which are crucial to the revival of the Sports industry.”
The Progressive Vanguard urged President Buhari and APC not to be deceived by the second placing of Team Nigeria at the just concluded All African Games to think all is well with our sports.
The Progressive Vanguard stressed: “The All Africa Games, as it is today is a developmental programme, Nigeria is just one of the few countries that take it seriously, most sporting nations in Africa, like South Africa, Kenya, Ethiopia and others send their young athletes. If the government is in doubt, they should just check the world ranking of athletes that won medals in Congo vis-à-vis their counterpart in other parts of the world, most of our medalists are not in the top 50 in the world.’’
“Apart from a brief period under GEJ when concerted efforts were made to revive our sports which was aborted because of politics , sports has been dead in Nigeria in the last ten years.’’
So, who will be our next sports minister? I cannot wait.
