By Maduabuchi Kalu on August 26, 2016

Following the poor outing of Team Nigeria in the just-concluded 2016 Rio Olympics in Brazil, the immediate past national boxing coach, Obisia Nwamkpa, has come hard on the Minister of Sports and Youth Development, Hon. Solomon Dalung and the federation presidents for the dwindling fortune of Nigerian sports.

According to the former Commonwealth and African champion, the entire blame should go to the Sports Ministry led by Dalung for its inability to supervise the various federations, saying due lack of visionary and focused leadership; the various federations are like children without parents.

He is of the opinion that sports administration is dead in the country and because sports administration is lacking, that is the reason Nigerian sports is in this sorry state. Nwamkpa bared his mind in an exclusive telephone interview on Tuesday.

“My take in the just-concluded 2016 Rio Olympics is that I am not surprised that we didn’t do well because I said it even before the Olympic started that anybody who is expecting improved performance from the 2012 London Games is deceiving him or herself,” the retired national boxing legend said.

“We did not perform at the Games because the Sports Ministry and the federations did not do what they were supposed to do. The Sports Ministry in particular is not giving the leadership expected of it and as a result the various Federations are behaving the way they like.

“The problem of Nigerian sports generally is administration. There is no hiding the fact that there is no more sports administration in this country. I have been in this country for long and in sports to know what I am talking about.

“This is not the ministry we met during our time. During our time sports administration was sound and solid and not what we are seeing today. As far as I am concerned, sports administration died in this country with the exit of Dr. Amos Adamu. After him, all subsequent Director Generals of the defunct National Sports Commission (NSC) didn’t know what it takes to administer sports in the country that is why our situation is like this,” the Abia State born former national champion explained.

“Due to lack of leadership by the ministry, the various federations do what pleases them. Nobody is there to direct the various federations on what to do and nobody supervises them. So, the federations are like children without the care and love of their parents. So, in this type of scenario how would those children grow up and become responsible members of the society? It is not possible. That is exactly what is happening to Nigerian sports at this point in time.

“We will continue in this cycle until some drastic steps are taken to rediscover sports administration in the country. The truth of the matter is that there is no way you will expect to reap from where you did not sow It doesn’t happen unless you are a fraud.

“For those who believe that money is the problem, I beg to disagree with them because some of us devoted all our lives to sports and we did not come into it because of money. It was the passion that drove us into sports.

“During our time our training camp allowance was just one Naira a day and when you travel outside the country for training at times we spend three weeks and that amounts to twenty one Naira (N21) and it was not enough then to even buy a transistor radio in Europe. So, the primary problem of Nigerian sports is not about money, but administration,” Nwamkpa explained.

“Administration is the head and just like it is in every facet of human endeavour; once the head is rotten the entire body will certainly be bad. It is as simple as that,” Nwamkpa said.

Speaking further, Nwamkpa accused sports administrators in the country of shortchanging athletes as they no longer follow the laid down procedure in handling athletes’ benefits in any tournament, saying it also affects the athletes as they keep wondering what their benefits would be at the end of their efforts in representing their fatherland in international championships without any clue.

He explained that during his time that they were normally handed a paper that contained all their entitlement for any competition which he said was a normal practice the world over, saying the administrators no longer do so thereby leaving the athletes in the dark as it concerns what their entitlements are at the end of each competition.

•Photo shows Obisia Nwamkpa.

Source Daily Sports

Posted August 26, 2016

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