“If ain’t broke don’t fix it” by Bert Lance (1977) (23rd Director of the US Office of Management and Budget). I begin this article with such quote to direct the Presidency attention to the happenings in sports industry after disgraceful London Olympics outing. It is the President of Nigeria that acknowledged systemic failure in the sports industry and by His Excellency order, the Chairman of the National Sports Commission (NSC) was required to restructure the entire industry since August 2012. Unfortunately, the restructure His Excellency dreamed of is not restructure at all but destruction through recycling of same individuals that brought shame to the country at the London Olympics.
Your Excellency, you directed that Mr. Bolaji Abdullahi supply you with among other things plans and ideas to move sports forward. In that regard, Mr. Abdullahi announced he hired MacKenzie group contrary to the provisions of Procurement Act of 2007 to aid in his approach but when questioned further the Minister said that American group merely setup the ill-conceived party for those that destroyed sports in Nigeria, tagged Presidential Sports Retreat. Monies were wasted that could provide a full year meal for over one hundred hungry athletes in Nigeria. This is not exaggeration.
Your Excellency, the Minister followed up such retreat agenda to confront Chief Executive Governor of Lagos State on stage at the opening ceremony of the National Sports Festival aimed originally for youth as repeated by the Governor while on the podium the Minister said the festival should be open to the same athletes that brought shame to the country in London. On the face of it, there is problem with the Minister agenda but in substance this view was not well thought-out for a Minister Calibre individual in charge of multi-Billion Naira budget. Specifically, the Minister failed to consider that he has annual budget of N500Billion for developing local athletes at grass root level but failed to account for such spending that it has become critical to contradict an Executive Governor that Nigeria cannot develop at grass root in Nigeria rather would rely on children of Nigerians born abroad. A novice might ask, what happened to about N2Billion received in the past four years when Nigeria does not or cannot boast of any athlete in development? Should the country continue to throw away money without any public accountability? There is in fact an individual in charge of the so-called grass root sports development and this writer would like to ask, Your Excellency, is it not your concern that N2Billion was controlled by an individual under direction of the Minister and not one single athlete was developed?
Your Excellency, with due respect again, I ask for what purpose is to restructure an industry full of novices and return such novices to continue? This is based on the rules (not law) to create sports’ federations which by international obligations were outside the mandate of NSC. Those federations were agents of international sports federations including football and for that reason must abide by those foreign rules, the key of which, is the independence of those federations from national government or control or interference. Unfortunately, NSC remained non-compliant and such violations are real time costs and disagreement that is destroying football and athletics. Those two sports received more monies from NSC than all sports combined but yet Boxing is the most productive in terms of investment for the country. Continuation to fund these federations can be seen as wasteful spending and aiding corruption because those entities at no time ever accounted for money received from NSC (I use that term to include verification of spending and paper trail) and in most cases these spending were duplication of grants received from those international sports federations in excess of N500Million (that’s the essence of removing interference of national government). The Minister new this is going on.
Your Excellency, India was recently banned from participating in Olympics in the future because the individual alleged to defraud India people during Commonwealth Games in Delhi was been returned as Chairman due to modifying rules that makes only him qualifies for the position. This is a concern for Nigeria to rethink the way sports are governed. Should the federal government prefer to maintain the current useless structure then, what the Minister did in the so-called federation election that returns the same individuals that were in London must be reversed because most of these individuals lacked skills to lead any sport in Nigeria and some them were thugs to begin with.
Your Excellency, it was further alleged that the Minister setup National Sports Council meeting on the eve of such federations elections in aid to pacify those attending with gifts so as to dance to his wishes and in the end those that agreed with him were part of those that become federation Boards members.
Your Excellency, it is further necessary to review spending activities of NSC because the Minister simply lacks accounting skill to know that his Ministry spent N4Million on Borehole and N400Million on soft drinks machine.
Your Excellency, over 600 athletes attended Benin athletics competition during the past weekend and before such held a meeting to determine their future and before reaching consensus the athletics federations banned every one of them including three banned for three years. This action was by the same federation leader, Solomon Ogba, that brought a former US drug offender Garfiled Ellenwood to be a Coach of Nigeria’s team in London until protest and just in the past weekend the same outgoing Solomon Ogba hired that individual again. Mr. Ogba has being acting without impunity and as mentioned by many athletes who are constantly in touch with this writer that he acts that way because of his political affiliation. This writer believes that other than the Minister, all in NSC staff must be hired based on merit and should NSC continue federations department, those staff must be hired on merit.
Your Excellency, is it possible to say that the Minister plan is a ‘restructure’? I think not, what the country is witnessing is act of destruction as there are litany of perennial problems including impecuniosity of NSC, Football and many federations. Is there any hope of revival? Yes and it begins with removal of the Minister because he simply endorsed all actions that resulted in embarrassment and disgrace of the country.
I rest
Dr. Rashid A. Balogun, CPA, LLB(Hons.), LLM(London)
(647) 309-0304
