By Daily Sports on December 28, 2015

Truly speaking, Nigeria with her enormous endowment of human and natural resources ought to be a leader in all facets globally, but, sadly, the most populous African nation with the highest concentration of black people in the world has long betrayed the trust God bestowed on her.

It is never an overstatement that the country is bereft of quality leadership that can readily navigate her affairs to enduring safety anchor. Such has been the dilemma since her political independence from Great Britain on October 1, 1960.

However, this write up would strictly restrict itself to sports. It is not hidden that the sector has had its fair share of poor performance spiced with far in-between successes. This is not entirely surprising because the sector is part and parcel of the rotten polity riddled with corruption, sharp practices and what have you. 

Such unnecessary intrigues have robbed sports of quality leadership – just like the Nigerian State. We have been left with third rated leadership. An example is in football shortly after the glorious regime of late Chief Sunday Dankaro, a board of the Nigeria Football Association that was peopled with very knowledgeable individuals – in short, a mixture of technocrats and seasoned captains of industry like late Chief Nathaniel Idowu, Sunday Dankaro and others.

It is instructive to note that veteran seasoned administrator par excellence, Prince Isidore Oduah,  was in the executive committee board that climaxed its activities with the victory  in the 1980 Africa Cup of Nations football summit hosted by Nigeria. That board remained the best ever not because they midwived Nigeria’s first ever major international football triumph but because of cohesion that ran round football in the country then.

I digress; this article is all about the round leather game but I had to do a brief chronicle of our shame as a nation that has much but does not know how to harness her potentials to the highest height. That lot has remained a very sad commentary on Nigeria. Simply put, sports have witnessed an unprecedented level of squandering of riches directly into personal pockets

It should be noted that the sector has all these years been ruled by a cartel. The bandits held sports hostage and destroyed the foundation of developing the Nigerian youth through sports. It was this demonic spirit of win, win at all cost that placed sports in this mess in the country today – no thanks to certain people that held topmost positions in the Sports Ministry and later the demented re-introduced National Sports Commission that has a Chairman in the Sports Minister without board members.

The civil servants run sports and tell whoever that comes in as Minister lies in order to stay in office. It is also in the public domain that they have been instrumental to corrupting each Minister, which leaves them giving nothing to sports, its stakeholders and sundry. All boils down to the leadership problems that have demystified this nation of abundance, reducing from a giant to a mere Lilliput.    

We have failed woefully to fly resoundingly in continental, Commonwealth and global sports championships. We have struggled. Time has proven us right that the epileptic victories are a fluke. We have relied more on the raw strength and the resilient spirit of Nigerian athletes to occasionally bulldoze our way to the victory podium. We have long been known for our flash-in-the pan performers, first class pretenders. The so called sports administrators have ruined and fouled the arena coupled with Sports Ministers that don’t even know their left from their right so far as sports is concerned. It is the major reason why civil servants easily deceive them till date.

The sports sector has no doubt become a gold mine where billions of naira are being given out as budgetary subventions and at the end of the day nothing tangible is seen as a result in the field of play. Athletes, the major reason for sports, are abominably shortchanged. The administrators have openly cornered money meant for athletes’ training, camping, allowances, refurbishing of facilities, etc, and converted them for personal usage.  

It is no longer secret that such impunity and outright abuse of office have become the tradition in sports as it is in the entire polity. Head or tail, sports are in tatters – just like the larger Nigeria.  No sport is left out, but the chief of them, football, remains the worst hit as the cabals have shared and shared their loot and it is overflowing all over their heads; yet this government that pretends to be fighting corruption has kept blind eyes to ALL the happenings in sports.

I will plead with athletes to have faith that nothing lasts forever. Meanwhile, we will keep bringing into the public domain the nefarious activities of sports administrators that have kept majority of athletes in abject poverty.

•Enyinnaya can be reached via 08055068145 (sms only) or by e-mail via sportzvictor@yahoo.com.au

Source Daily Sports

Posted December 28, 2015

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