I SIDDON LOOK DEY LAUGH O!

Prof. Adedoja, Sports Minister

In Social Work, a helping profession, the practitioner is a resource to the client. The moment she is not seen as such, it is obvious that she has not only lost the case, has become a fodder and a problem to the case.

My thinking is that Professor Taoheed Adedoja, the sitting Minister of Sports/Chairman, National Sports Commission (NSC) may have become a fodder to sports in Nigeria. While Nigerian sports and particularly football is dying and cringing for breathe, the minister was busy inspecting stadia facilities across the nation. That probably is the priority of the Ministry of and the minister.

There is what the Chinese call a sciolist. It is used to describe the one who thinks he knows and refuses to learn from others. Now, I can shout Uhuru! I did warned a colleague who read the minister’s profile when he took over from the Pharmacist, Isa Ibrahim Bio, “do not jubilate. My cue for caution was taken from Engineer Sani Ndanusa (FNSE) who brought an insider 12-year credential as the president of the Nigeria Tennis Federation as minister basking in the euphoria of knowing the terrain. He made promises and could not fulfil even half of one!

No sooner, Ndanusa successfully dislodged Hon Bala Kaoje as Nigeria’s worst ever sports minister. Pronto! He was recycled into the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) to repeat his failures in Tennis and in the NSC.

Adedoja, I hasten to add, is making Ndanusa’s tenure in the ministry look like better after all. This is considering that the man has almost closed one of the four months in his tenure so far. Thank God that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) does not respond to her choice of ministers on performance. For now, he gets my vote, despite that he still has three months plus to go, as Nigeria’s worst sports minister. Can we, in the same tradition, for now, applaud him for the honour?

Agreed, he prides himself as the first core professional, a Professor of Sports Administration, to occupy the office as minister. Methinks, if he sits in there for a day, he should make a stark difference from his ‘unlearned’ predecessors. As a professor, it is assumed that he knows all the theories. He has been in the corridors of sports administration long enough and should know where the shoe pinches but it is like he does not even know the impact of the pinches.

I had thought wrongly that the man was going to perform some magical moves that will make the president, Goodluck Ebere Jonathan, find it extremely difficult and practically impossible than not to beg him saying, “Adedoja, please come back and continue from where we stopped before we won this election.” I had assumed wrongly too that the man was going to set some precedents that will help his principal‘s campaign for election.

RAISON D’ETRE: Children who go to school now are as good as empty. I can swear to that effect. I had the privilege of reading history in my secondary school. At the A’level, I read European history. None of the current children had this quality advantage. For instance, the French would demand for the hubris of your logic on any matter. It is their belief fundamentally that even the mentally ill (which an untrained mind calls “mad”) still has some logia informing his acts. This they call the ‘raison d’etre’. Mine includes the following:

a)      THE PDP (1999-2011): Of the men the ruling party has tossed to sports, it is obvious that the most successful had been outsiders. They are in the top three:

                                                              i.      Late Ishaya Mark Aku: A Water Engineer;

                                                            ii.      Hon. Isa Ibrahim Bio: A Pharmacist;

                                                          iii.      Mr. Abdulrahman Gimba, A Lawyer;

And in my own (myopic?) opinion, the bottom thereof the log, for now (I don’t know how it can look like in the next three months):

i)                    Hon. Bala Kaoje,

ii)                  Engineer Sani Ndanusa, (FNSE) – A professor by Engineering standards;

iii)                Professor Taoheed Adedoja;

b)      Arising therefrom, no one should wonder why the Nigerian sports industry has in the last 12 years period of this party abysmally failed. The last four months of this dozen years portend bad omen, tears, sorrow and blood. The facts include:

1.               The Nigeria Professional League crises;

2.               The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) abuse and rape of its own Rule of Law – The NFF Statutes Edition 2010 par the election into the Leagues which she under Sani Lulu gave autonomy; Like the Bourbons of France who never learnt anything from history and forgot nothing to history;

3.               Hordes of civil cases in various court rooms – a function of the systemic failure of our football and the trust to internally regulate itself. These cases will soon amass;

4.               MTN vs Globacom, the somersaults and home drama which the NPL Congress has rubber stamped to be repeated;

5.               The asphyxiating state of all sports disciplines in Nigeria;

6.               The state of our current sports facilities in the face of increased expenditure and less quality results to show for it and the lack of deliberate structures to train champions. Each time we have ‘accidental discharge’ of a champion emerging by dint of personal hardwork, we “steal” the credits and take the results officially;

7.               The quality and quantity of corruption in the industry. No wonder credible organisations from the Organised Private Sector (OPS) shy away from sports sponsorship despite increasing incentives to sponsor sports in the country;

CONCLUSION: When General Olusegun Obaanjo looked far away into the horizon after his former deputy, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar emerged as the concensus candidate of the northern flank of the PDP to face sitting President Goodluck Jonathan in the party’s primary, the man proverbially retorted to journalistic inquisitions, “I DEY LAUGH O”

When the man with diastema, the oratorical lawyer and journalist, the one we call THE CICERO OF ESA-OKE, Chief Bola Ige was rigged out of the Government House in Agodi-Ibadan by a desperate National Party of Nigeria (NPN) in 1983, the man said, he was adopting the “SIDDON LOOK” approach.

Having presaged the three months left of the tenure of Professor Adedoja in this term as minister from the one month he had spent, I repeat with respect and equanimity, that by the time the PDP and President Goodluck jonathan start the next Olympic type of four-year cycle, ca we ask for a foreigner as sports minister?

Each time our football “fails” and some people who know they know and refuse to learn from others who also know (sciolists), they abuse us for asking them questions as being “busy bodies” since they are “core professionals” and in a jiffy, they tell us we are not properly trained and they bring foreigners to manage our football treating them like kings.

They will then import some fake white skins, pay heavily for his pigmentation, share the loot with him, and when as usual he fails, resort to the likes of Shaibu Amodu to come and clean the Augean stable to recruit another whiteman.

Anyhow, I have spoken, I withdraw into an attic watching and waiting for the calloused soul of Nigerian football. I SIDDON LOOK DEY LAUGH O!