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And so by the mercy of God we find ourselves in another year.

Like last year,
this year is a loaded one for sports. What this means is that our
athletes from footballers to sprinters will have their hands full in
2011.

As usual, whether
they excel or not may not come down to whether they will be willing to
use their talent to the glory of their fatherland. It will surely come
down to whether our sports administrators would be willing to change;
to put the national interest over and above their stinking narrow
interests.

That is clearly
what will determine whether Nigeria’s flag will flutter beside the
medals podium at major international sporting competitions this year.

But this year will
not be about competitions alone. There a number of issues that need to
be resolved this year if we hope to have any measure of stability in
Nigerian sports going forward. The most crucial of these issues will
have to be the status and structure of the National Sports Commission
(NSC).

As conceived by
those who support the idea of a commission over the sports ministry,
the NSC is supposed to be the brain box of the sports establishment,
initiating policies and programmes, co-ordinating activities and
setting benchmarks for sports development.

To do this
effectively, it will need competent professionals who are not
necessarily sportsmen (but it will help if they were for they will
understand the need for urgency in certain matters), to drive the
process of ensuring that assembly plants producing talent across the
country are oiled consistently so that Nigeria becomes a top sporting
nation able to hold its own with other global sports powers.

As presently
constituted, the NSC cannot meet these challenges. In the main, its
direct connection to government particularly with its head being a
politically appointed individual has robbed it of the needed latitude
to operate effectively. One of the dangers of the present arrangement
as we have seen, is the fact of instability of tenure. With ministers
coming and going with amazing rapidity (we have had 11 ministers of
sports in the last ten years while the NSC has had five chairmen
between 2008 and now), there is no way programmes can be carefully
thought out, let alone implemented, no matter the intelligence or good
intentions of those in charge of affairs at the commission.

The NSC Act, which
is presently being worked on must address this issue. It should seek
ways of giving the NSC some measure of autonomy from government.
Essentially, a board presided over by a chairman with a fixed term of
say, four years, will go some way in creating conditions necessary for
planning and execution of programmes.

Without this, there
is no way we can hope to make any meaningful progress. In the sports
commission, there are a lot of intellectually sound individuals who
have not be given the needed platform to put their talent at the
disposal of the nation. By and large they have vegetated at the
commission because the system has not seriously challenged them to be
productive. We must get the best out of them.

Lazy bones

Aside the NSC Act,
another issue needing resolution is the relationship between football
and government. We may shy away from it; we may consider it unimportant
but the stark reality is that without resolving the question of whether
or how much government should be involved in the running of football,
we will keep having the kinds of crisis that brought the game to its
knees in 2010.

In this regard, the
2004 NFA Act known to most Nigerians as Decree 101 is key. That act
gives government leeway into football administration by virtue of its
funding of the sport. Over the years there have been strident calls for
the repeal of that act to enable individual with both knowledge of the
game and administrative acumen play leading roles.

Such calls have not
been heeded principally because there has been reluctance on the part
of the FA officials, who too are lazy to get off their butts and source
for funds for the administration of the game, secretly lobby to have
action stalled on the matter while openly professing dislike of the
power the act gives the NSC to interfere in its affairs.

At the other end of
the spectrum are NSC officials themselves who benefit from the system
in the way they control the funds meant for the federation. Not to be
forgotten of course are members of the National Assembly whose
reluctance to repeal the act is fed by the trips they embark on once in
a while courtesy of either the football federation or the NSC.

Whatever the
drawback, the truth is that we cannot continue like this. Something has
to give or elsewhere we remain stuck in the mire. While the truth
remains that given the structure of our society and the role football
plays in empowering Nigerians, government should be involved in it in a
way, it must be noted that the present arrangement whereby officials of
the federation wait on government for handouts clearly does the game no
good.

Football is big
business globally, but sadly, Nigeria lags behind for the simple reason
that continued government control throws up misfits whose understanding
of football administration is that it is a pathway to financial
breakthrough.

The crises, which crippled Nigerian football last year would have
been prevented if we had individuals ready to work for the development
of the game in charge of football administration. We must therefore
open up space for the right individuals to come in.