Nigeria Content Online

It seems Nigerian sports has become inured to
crisis. At a time the men charged with the responsibility of seeing to its development
are supposed to be rolling up their sleeves and putting their shoulders to the
wheel, we are seeing them being consumed by ambition.

Ambition by itself is not evil. Every human
being should have aspirations; without something to look forward to, life would
be truly meaningless. However, the kind of ambition that a lot of our
administrators have is the rabid kind; without any redeeming quality
whatsoever.

For them the injunction by Frantz Fanon that,
“if any philosophy is here being preached it is that man must not only exist
but must live well, the measurement of any intellectual activity being the
welfare of the people”, clearly has no meaning.

We have seen in the last one month how Nigerian
football has been brought to its knees first, through the ambition of Sani Lulu
to return to power and then through the scheming of his Man Friday, Aminu
Maigari, to mount the saddle after Lulu’s indiscretions landed him in trouble.

We have also seen how members of Nigeria’s
rugby family have refused to call truce to a battle, which has raged since 2009
when the National Sports Commission decided in its own wisdom to let interested
lovers of the sport bid for and take over its administration.

Instead of sitting down to seek ways of
revolving the disagreement, which arose when one party accused the Secretary
General of Nigeria Rugby Football Federation of influencing the handing of
concession rights to its opponents, they have lately engaged themselves in
verbal warfare.

To cap the disquiet in the sports fraternity,
officials of the Nigeria Olympic Committee, who ordinarily by virtue of their
being members of the world Olympic movement, ought to be staid and refined in
manner, have turned out to be hardly better than bickering ninnies.

At the centre of the storm are two men, Sani
Ndanusa and Habu Gumel, who if they properly sat down and reflected on their
stewardship to Nigerian sports should come to the conclusion that a quiet exit
from the scene at this point would be the fitting thing to do.

Losing
touch with reality

Both men particularly Gumel, who has sat on the
board of the Nigeria Volley Federation as president for about twelve years now,
cannot be relied upon to generate any ideas that will drive Nigerian sports
forward.

Under Gumel’s successor, Eddie Aderinokun,
volleyball thrived in Nigeria with players and officials alike freely relishing
Nigeria’s participation in local and international volleyball competitions.
Under Gumel’s watch the story has been different. Nigeria’s rating in the
global volleyball order has plummeted following its non-participation in key
international volleyball events. At the same time, competitions on the local
scene have become non-existent.

That aside, Gumel’s tenure as Director of
Sports Facilities in the Ministry of Sports witnessed the decay of sports
facilities around the country. Key national edifices like the National Stadium
in Lagos became breeding ground for criminals and haven for destitute and
prostitutes even as facilities rot away.

For many years, the facility, which used to be
the pride of Nigeria, was swamped by darkness as NEPA (now PHCP) cut power
supply owing to the refusal of the management of the facility to pay its debts
to the body. This deplorable situation existed despite the fact that the
stadium was raking in more annually from individuals, corporate organisations
and religious bodies who used its grounds for different programmes.

As for Ndanusa, who in his first term as
President of the Nigeria Tennis Federation revitalised the sport, which had
witnessed a steady decline prior to his arrival, he seemed to have lost his way
at some point along the way. His tenure as minister of sports was to put it
mildly an unmitigated disaster. The man, who upon his appointment promised not
to follow his predecessors in their blind devotion to football, became
inexorably sucked in into the vortex of football administration.

What genius these two men hope to bring to
sports administration at this stage beats the imagination. How they hope to
make an impact late in the day after squandering opportunity after opportunity
leaves one wondering whether they haven’t lost touch with reality.

It is barely a few weeks to the Commonwealth
Games in Delhi, India and Nigeria is anything but prepared. This clearly does
not figure in the calculations of Gumel and Ndanusa, who before he was fired as
sports minister this year should have supervised the preparation of the various
federations under his Supervision as minister of sports. As it turned out, he
was more interested in seeing the Super Eagles qualify for the World Cup in
South Africa.

If you ask me, Nigeria’s Olympic movement doesn’t need any
of these men. While Gumel has overstayed his welcome and should quietly retire
to contemplate other ventures, Ndanusa is too dour and lethargic to provide the
leadership needed to galvanise the Olympic to serious action.