Daily Champion (Lagos)
COLUMN
14 October 2007
Posted to the web 15 October 2007
Lagos
Can anybody out there hazard a guess and say what Nigeria sports policy is? For sure nobody can tell if there is one.
But there is no questioning the fact that everyone can predict that there is going to be crisis, the moment Nigeria sports men and women step into the sporting arena to contest for sports glory. For Nigerian sports there is trouble everywhere, in athletics, boxing, and football where there is presently a dog fight going on?
These disciplines that have just been mentioned are the country’s leading sports, and they have a lot of fan base, but sadly these sports and indeed others are comatose, because everything is broken. The promises, the pacts that were made the oaths that were taken; is broken and nobody is planning anything, nobody is developing anything.
What the big shots in sports are interested in is to gather the athletes, put them on the plane and have them participate, if they win fine, they might be lucky to get a Presidential hand shake, national honours and some block of flats.
Also, if they happen to lose then they get thoroughly flogged by the sports writers who don’t care to know what went wrong, they don’t care about shaping opinion of those in charge of sports and this makes those in the helms of affairs to behave like thing gods, they are glorified despite mismanaging the resources of the nation.
Ask any of the sporting federation coaches or technical department of a blue print to develop athletes for the next five years, all they can tell you is that, what the directors at the Sports ministry want are athletes who can give Nigeria gold at the Olympics.
They don’t want to hear anything about development, because to them winning matters and this is what gladden the hearts of the politicians, this is the only way the money that was released for the Games can be justified, but really nobody cares if the country comes back home without a medal.
But seriously speaking wouldn’t it be nice if Nigeria sports towers above the current catastrophic clouds that have totally eclipsed it, wouldn’t it be nice if the sports here were a rich flourishing industry.
In 1976 Australia went to the Olympics and came back almost empty handed, there was a national outcry, and the parliamentarians launched a debate on the poor showing, and that country’s sports policy makers went to the drawing board, to plan and today Australia is a power house in world sports.
How many times Nigeria has went to world sports battles and returned bruised and battered and how many lesson have the sports policy makers learnt, they have always gone back to the drawing board, but things are getting worse.
Hopefully Nigeria will be hosting the commonwealth games in 2014, but damn; nobody is thinking about how to groom a special breed of athletes for that event and indeed the Olympic 2012, which comes before it.
If this country is to make any impact, this is the time the National Sports Commission should task the Olympic sports associations to produce crack teams of track and field, boxing, wrestling and other sports the country has a tradition, this they can achieve by scouting for talents in the grassroots and then with a good programme nurture them to world reckoning.
These are the things the sports committee of the National Assembly should look into, they should rouse themselves and debate Nigeria’s down the slope performance at the continental and global sports.
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There are too many kids waiting to be discovered, but because there is no avenue to display their God-given talents, they are left to rot away and of course a life of vice and crime certainly follows.
One thing the legislators should be looking into is how to make sports a viable venture in Nigeria, if they look very well they will realize that one of the major problem of sports is the over bureaucratisation of the country’s sports. Sports need to be rescued from the chambers of civil service ineptitude.
There are Nigerians, who have the capacity to turn around the fortunes of the federations, they should be given the chance to come and administer sports so that the right thing can be done at the right time.