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Ask sporting buffs, they will tell you for free the problems
facing Nigeria sports today: lack of equipment, facilities or planning, aged or
aging players, age falsification, a partisan sporting press, inept and ill
equipped coaches and others problems too numerous to mention.

But while the above no doubt are true, the biggest problem
facing sports was aptly captured by Anthony Kodjo Williams, the former chairman
of Nigeria Football Federation: self serving and half baked administrators on
and off the field.

Williams tagged them ‘Alamala administrators’, since then they
have also added voodoo and other ‘unscientific’ ways of managing sports to
their style And as long as they are around, our sports will never move forward.

They will do anything to resist change because, in the midst of
the confusion and disorganisation that reigns in sports, they amass millions
each year, while sports continue to die a slow and gradual death.

It’s all garbage

As new sports minister Ibrahim Isa Bio visits the National
Stadium today, he should gird his loins. About three decades ago, enchanted BBC
staff who came to cover the Lagos ’73 All Games told their local colleagues:
“This is not a Sport Stadium, but a Sport City.”

Today however, what Bio will see is Garbage City, where the only
activities that thrives there are the sale of alcohol and prostitution by
night, while officials of the NSC have turned the place into an events centre
where they rake in millions monthly from renting the various venues to
churches, mosques, wedding reception, musical shows, parking lots and other
forms of activities, and they never rendered account to the commission or used
the monies to repair the edifice.

Bio should think about ministers before him since the beginning
of this new republic in 1999 – Damishi Sango, Isaiah Aku, Steve Akiga, Musa
Muhammad, Simiala Sambawa, Bala Kao’je, Abdurrahman Gimba and the immediate
past minister Sanni Ndanusa, They all began their tenures by visiting the
National Stadium, Lagos. There, they always promised to do something; but they
all left without doing anything.

At the end of their tenures, the civil servants and sycophants
in the media, who praised them to high heavens while they were in office, would
be the first to castigate them the moment they are sacked.

I almost wept for my profession the Saturday Ndanusa was
removed, when I read venom being poured on the man by journalists who made
weekly trips to Abuja to wine and dine with him when he was minister, telling
him that he was the best thing that ever happened to sports.

These are guys who cheered Ndanusa on in his ambition to be
president of the Olympics Committee. And now that he is gone, they are telling
the world that his ambition to be NOC president was responsible for his lack of
focus.

Asking hard questions

Bio need to ask Sports Commission staff what the facilities
department in the commission is doing, if all the stadia in the country are in
such terrible shape.

The director of sports development needs to explain to Bio the
number of athletes they have developed in the last ten years. The minister
needs to ask why the commission’s main job has been reduced to preparing for
the Olympic Games, All African Games, Commonwealth Games, and other games and
championship, and its primary responsibility of discovering athletes has been
relegated to the background.

The federation chairmen should explain to the minister why the
only thing that occupies their time is the politics of who becomes the next
president of NOCs instead of developing their sports. They should explain why
many of them have not organised a single competition since the beginning of the
year.

The Athletics Federation of Nigeria owes athletes, officials,
former athletes and other members of the athletics family millions of naira.
That is a question waiting to be asked.

The minister also needs to ask the head of AFN who authorised
him to take a loan of N25 million from a former athlete. What is the approval
limit of the director general of the commission? Why would a federation
chairman take a loan of N25 million without the approval of the commission of
the board of the AFN?

Civil servants as praise
singers

Back to the managers at NSC, and other arms of sports, they
will, like they did to those before him sing tunes that are pleasant to his
ears.

A majority of those scheming to come back into the Nigeria
Professional League board and the Nigeria Football Federation will sing all
sorts of tunes to the minister ears, but he should ask them one question: what
have they done since their tenure began to justify re-election?

Sanni Lulu will point to the U-17 and U-20, but the minister
should ask him why the players that won the U-17 in 2007 are not doing well in
their respective clubs or for the country. What have they done with the
allocation in the last few years?

With election a few months away, they are asking the minister to
steer clear of the elections; that it will be government interference. But they
have forgotten that Sambawa, Amos Adamu and others used government machinery to
impose Lulu as NFF president.

Nduka Irabor had organised the freest and the fairest election
in the history of Nigeria sport, which returned Ibrahim Galadima as president,
but the election was annulled by the government and Lulu was imposed on
everybody. And now the same Lulu and his board members are talking about
government interference? They may have short memories, but we do not.

As for the men of the NPL, a majority of those fighting to be
NPL leaders are self seekers, only wanting to feed on sports.

Bio revolution

The bottom line is that this new sports minister’s revolution
will amount to nothing, if the present hawks in sports administration in
Nigeria are not sent packing.

Bio, do what will etch your name in history forever. Send the alamala
administrators out.