President Muhammadu Buhari’s frame reminds one of some the best Kenyans, Ethiopians and other East Africans renowned for running the long distance races. Buhari’s brisk walk shows that he has not lost touch with the fitness drills he was subjected to as a military man. But Buhari isn’t a known sports lover – forget the fact that in May he cut the tape to open the road where the famous yearly Okpekpe 10 kilometres Road Race is run.
Not one to talk frivolously, many had waited for Buhari’s response to sportsmen and women’s welfare. Many still await his sports agenda and how it would address the endemic problems in the industry. Will the President sustain the monetary rewards to athletes or will he return to the uninspiring handshake policy for athletes whose sporting life span is short, unpredictable and riddled with life threatening injuries? Need I inform Buhari of the devastatingly long list of sportsmen and women who made this country proud in the past, who are languishing in sick beds, crippled by injuries sustained in their active years? How about the dead?
So, when Buhari challenged sports administrators to ensure that they restore swimming’s glory, I chuckled. Of not is the fact that Buhari isn’t a neophyte in sports. He knows that if we dominate the multi-sports competitions, such as the all African Games and the Olympics, Nigeria will win the diadems of such sports tournaments. Buhari also showed that he knew that all our facilities are in disrepair and would like them fixed, beginning with the swimming pools, which should be the cheapest to revamp. Just to add, Mr. President, you need to speak with governors of Edo, Rivers, Ondo, Delta and Lagos to challenge their ministries of education and sports councils to revive the now moribund grassroots competitions of yore. The governors should find out if those who produced these athletes are still alive for some tutorials, especially the man who produced those awesome swimmers from the old Ondo State.
I knew that the administrators don’t understand the metaphor in the President’s speech and it isn’t surprising because they are used to spending government money. Of course, Buhari knows that Nigeria didn’t register any swimmer for the All African Games – a big scandal – from the briefs he got during the session with our sports administrators last week. The President was being proactive should emphasise the need for Nigeria to finish in second position, otherwise he would ask questions. Buhari deserves to ask questions given our population and Nigerians’ Spartan fighting spirit when properly motivated. The President asking for swimming medals is the clincher we need to make sports the business that it is in other climes.
Rather than reflect on the bigger picture of Buhari’s mandate for swimming medals, some busybody administrators roared that it wouldn’t happen. What Buhari literarily meant was for those who visited him to do something about our infrastructure. Buhari has shown that he is ready for this job of moving the country out of the pit in which the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) threw it and sports certainly hasn’t been left out of his dream for a better Nigeria.
How can we talk about reinventing swimming, if we cannot have light in the stadia? The task of fixing swimming means getting enough chlorine for the water in the pools across the country. Can we talk about swimming without looking at the stadia where the swimming federations are squatters? Why fix swimming when the football pitch is balding, bumpy and overgrown with grass enough for hunters to set traps for rodents, rabbits and other animals?
Would be right to fix swimming when the tartans tracks are an awful sight to behold? Shouldn’t we ask why these facilities are in ruins? What happened to all the cash earmarked for the maintenance of these facilities, which have been in ruination for ages?
Buhari knows the problems with our sports even if he isn’t a sports freak. He reads newspapers and follows discussions on the electronic media. Asking the administrators to revive swimming was the best challenge and I hope that the president will ensure that his instructions are kept. No one dares Buhari anyway.
Fixing all the swimming pools isn’t a child’s play. Such an adventure is best achieved by the total overhaul of the big stadia. It also raises the poser about what happened to the cash budgeted for sports development in the past three decades. Another way to fix swimming would be for the government to either lease all the big stadia or sell the complexes.
Stadium management is a huge money-spinner for those who understand the dynamics of the industry. It generates cash for investors, given the marketing windows a stadium can provide. You will best appreciate the essence of leasing stadiums to concessionaires when you visit European countries. Most stadiums have a wide range of business activities generating funds for their owners.
The volume of business activities is indescribable. A classical example is the decision by the Sierra Leone government to play her Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers in Nigeria. NFF has picked the Adokie Amiesiamaka International Stadium in Port Harcourt because it the most befitting. Need I restate what Rivers State government will rake into its covers from hosting the matches? Trust the Garden City people to effectively maximise the marketing platform to sell their goods and services. I won’t be surprised to see miniature stock shops around the Adokie Amiesiamaka International Stadium where people can eat, drink and celebrate before, during and after the matches, not forgetting the hawkers who will mill around the stadium selling their wares. I can’t wait. Port Harcourt will come alive.
Globally when stadia are built, the construction firms are given contracts to first maintain the complexes for a period of five to 10 years. These firms use this period to train indigenes on how the facilities are repaired. The essence is for those trained to teach others and invariably increase the pool of stadium engineers. If we had this maintenance culture, our edifices wouldn’t have been in prostrate conditions.
Nigeria’s steady slide in athletics rests with the fact there are no competitions to keep athletes busy. Such competitions were the breeding grounds for rooky athletes, who were nurtured and exposed as new discoveries during the country’s quest for sporting glories.
Athletics in Nigeria is all about Blessing Okagbare. If Okagbare flops, Nigeria fails. This is very sad, given our population. Athletics used to be the flagship of corporate sponsorship. The crowd at big athletics meets, such as the then annual Mobil Athletics Championships was as big as those of football. The media buzz was awesome and our home-grown athletes gave their foreign-based counterparts a run for their money.
The athletics calendar was packed, beginning with the Hussey Shield and Lady Manuwa Cup for secondary school pupils. Inter-house sports competitions celebrated the best, who were eager to wear Nigeria’s colours. Local competitions like the inter-Local Government Challenge and the State Sports Festival served, as the podium to discover athletes who represented their states at the National Sports Festival. The buzz from the National Sports Festival is gone, no thanks to the sickening manner in which the games have been postponed by inept governors who lobby to host the competitions.
To me, the most incredible of the problems is how the National Sports Festival became politicised. It used to be the competition for the National Sports Commission (NSC), held religiously every two years. I weep each time I find myself in stadia where National Sports Festivals hold these days. It was fun attending the Kaduna ’77 Games; Oluyole ’79 Games; Rivers ’88 Games to mention a few which I participated in. Please, don’t remind me of how the Bendel State contingent stormed Lagos in long buses driven by women in 1975. It was a show buster anchored by easily the best sports governor in Nigeria till date, Dr. Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia, a man of ideas. Take a bow sir (Ughator Okpere sir, ise!). I digress!
We have seen the effect of piece-meal reconstruction of the National Stadium in Surulere, Lagos. It didn’t serve the purpose of accommodating all the indoor sports. Shortly before the D’ Tigers conquered Africa in basketball in Tunisia, there was an unfortunate incident where the country’s volleyball men’s team refused to vacate the court for the basketball team to play a competition. The renovation of the courts was done by the sponsor of the basketball tournament, which gave them the right to use the place. Perhaps, the volleyball squad stuck to their guns because the place is a federal government property. Foul. The Volleyball Federation must emulate their basketball counterparts to repair one of the dilapidating indoor courts which would give them the right to use it for training and competitions.
Table tennis, boxing and a few other sports federations have done their bit with renovation. But it is the presidential mandate to reinvent swimming that would bring about the holistic overhaul of the National Stadium in Lagos and others, like Liberty Stadium in Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello Stadium in Kaduna and the Nnamdi Azikiwe Stadium in Enugu.
Once these structures are fixed, we can be talking about returning to the old days when athletes had facilities to train. We can also talk about providing platforms for Nigerians to recreate. We can use the premises to house our sportsmen and women before big tournaments instead of staying in hotels at huge costs to the federations’ purse.
We can only beat the best if we do the things that they have perfected. It is sickening to think that every time we want to prepare for big competitions, we talk about going to Europe to train. If we channel all that we have spent in the past to renovating our stadia, the facilities wouldn’t be in the ruination that they are in today.
I hope that Buhari will ask these administrators for updates on his directive when they return from the All African Games in Congo.
