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Patrick Ekeji, Director General of the National
Sports Commission (NSC) must be revelling in his new found power.After easing
out Habu Gumel as President of the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) and
installing his former boss, Sani Ndanusa, he must be feeling very pleased with
himself; after all, power intoxicates.

The
former Green Eagles defender appears to be finally coming into his own. For the
moment he seems to be getting the better of his rival, Amos Adamu, who has a
contempt charge hanging over his head for his role in the Nigeria football
federation elections, which held on August 26.Since Adamu was moved from the
sports ministry following his life and death struggle with Abdulrahman Gimba,
the sports minister at the time of his removal, Ekeji has become the ‘Lord of
the Manor’ at the sports ministry. He has used every opportunity to consolidate
his hold on power at the ministry.

The
brazen manner he moved against the sit-tight Gumel, on September 16 showed just
how much he relishes his new position as a power broker in Nigeria’s sports
establishment. However, like every individual enthralled by power, he failed to
apply tact.

Many
will agree that it was needless holding that September 16 election particularly
as the Gumel camp had already agreed to hold an election on September 23. What
he did amount to naked show of power? It betrayed a lack of tact and an absence
of strategy on his part.

If
he wanted Gumel out by all means and the voting delegates to the elections are
largely members of the different sports federations under the control of the
sports ministry, couldn’t he have issued simple instructions to his ‘boys’ that
‘government’ wasn’t interested in Gumel’s return to office?

Everyone
knows that going by tradition, the officials in the sports federations cannot
by any stretch of the imagination even begin to summon the nerve to disobey
such directive. Effective as this option would have been, it was not attractive
to Ekeji because it would have robbed him of the opportunity to show that he is
now ‘in charge’.

Power and responsibility

For
someone who for years had chafed under the expansive influence of Adamu, known
as ‘Mr. Fix it’ for his numerous schemes, Ekeji was not going to pass up an
opportunity to show off his new found authority.

Unfortunately,
his new found authority has not improved the fortunes of Nigerian sports. In
the last one year we have been witnesses to a gradual but consistent decay of
sports and its facilities in the country. At the same time Nigerian teams
across the various sports have become cannon fodder for other national teams,
the sporting landscape in the country has become pockmarked by crises.

And
what has been Ekeji’s role? It is hard to tell. You even wonder at times
whether a Nigerian sport has leadership. Ibrahim Bio, the man who replaced the
phlegmatic Sani Ndanusa, who has managed to scheme into the leadership of the
NOC, and who appeared to be the right man for the job has been bogged down by
health concerns.

This
means that Ekeji, who has spent donkey years in the ministry and therefore
ought to understand the dynamics of Nigerian sports, should provide the needed
leadership. He has failed to do so preferring instead to solidify his power
base.

And
so it is that on the eve of a major international sporting event like the
Commonwealth Games, the Nigerian contingent is hopelessly unprepared.

It
is amazing that a sports ministry that can provide four crafty individuals with
N1billion to spend on a football tournament for which we returned empty-handed
cannot make funds available to other sports to prepare for Games we had known
we would be taking part in four years ago.

As
I write this, the World Basketball Championship for women is going on in the
Czech Republic and Nigeria is absent. The male version of the tournament ended
just a little over a week ago in Turkey with Nigeria also absent from the
event, which had Angola, Cote‘d Ivoire representing Africa.

Power
comes with a certain responsibility. It demands that the individual exercising
it fulfill basic obligations. In Ekeji’s case it demands that millions of
Nigerian youngsters who make to make sports a career be provided with the
opportunity to do so. It means that since sports in the country is still
tightly controlled by government and Ekeji, as the ministry’s chief planner
(the sports minister is a political appointee who will go at any time) should
put in place structures that would provide these youngsters a platform to
excel.

It
means that Ekeji should not as he was quoted to have said, insist that there
was nothing wrong for athletes who have no other means of livelihood to pay for
use of facilities at the National Stadium even when the reason for that
training is to represent Nigeria at international sporting competitions.