The National Sports Commission has cried out that it is broke. This comes barely 48 hours after Nigeria Football Federation raised such alarm that resulted to an alleged cutting down of salaries of some national team coaches, allowances of various national teams and sacking of their backroom staff.
Investigation shows that the woes of the commission started immediately after the recently concluded African Cup of Nations where the Super Eagles did the country proud.
The commission in making sure that the nation’s contingent had a good showing in the bi-annual soccer fiesta, the Bolaji Abudullahi’s led National Sports Commission left their account red and this subsequently led the commission into sudden quest to raise fund to execute other projects.
It was gathered that about N90m is being deducted monthly from the allocation of the commission.
A quick glance at the finances of the commission shows that after payment of salaries, servicing of huge debts, departments and units this month, not more than N40m remained for other expenses.
Many departments in NSC were hard-hit, including activity of Sports Federations Department whose scheduled National Council on Sports holding in Ilorin this month scaled down due paltry sum given by Commission compared to proposed budget.
This particularly made the Sports Minister earlier in the week to remind Nigeria Football Federation that it had spent more than half of its annual budget.
NFF on their part have been reportedly pulled out of next year’s African Cup of Nations meant for African based players and currently doing staff audit in order to cut cost.
Meanwhile, the current financial predicament of National Sports Commission may cost Nigeria the sole African Ticket for world U-12 Baseball championship handed to it by International Baseball Federation (IBAF).
Significantly, Nigeria is the only African Country participating in the competition and failure to participate after qualifying has a severe penalty
Though the National Sports Commission has not finally ruled out the sponsorship of the team, but there are indications that if their fortunes fail to improve before the July date of the championship, the Nigeria baseball team will wait for the big hammer of IBAF.
