Is God of Sports a South African?‏

President GEJ...his nation's sports needs prayers

These are days when I see a high quality of corruption ravaging the healthy pores of Nigerian sports but some of the avid readers of this blog make me see that God is on my side.

God bless Mr. Sam Nwobum. He wrote me a long private mail. I read it over and again. At a breathe, he was full of prayers for myself and one of my soul brothers, Mike Enahoro: "una thinking dey sabi charge my head make hin work correct."
Nwobum, said he once played for Nigeria in football. He lives in the USA. He added, "even in African Continental Bank FC of Lagos, we were schooled to know that, as far back in our history from the 1930’s, Nigeria’s sport was wrongly structured. It was historically designed not to produce champions or return dividends of investment.

Officials of the colonial government often say "sports is a social service. Is that not what the current relic of the civil service keep telling us even 81 years after? See?"
All the struggles you are involved in athletics, football, scrabble etc confirm one fact. Nigerian sports has jaundice, colonial fever, people who think they know but who actually know nothing.

I slept for two days. For like every hour these ideas kept knocking my head. I reviewed and came up with the following:

1.     The NSC despite its wrong foundation until the coming of Dr. Amos Adamu in the 1980s was involved in the policy development of  athlete development and merely representing Nigeria in international
sports competitions;

2.     Since the 1980s, our focus changed. All the successes recorded in sports were never deliberately planned. So, the quality of corruption that was imported. Nigeria gained notoriety for planlessness, heavy spending and corruption. We are well respected for these.

3.     Real people left the industry. Charlatans, pretenders, failures in other sectors of life, corruptly rich individuals who need social acceptance etc took over administration.

 
ADVANCING BACKWARD: The country is yet to and may not tap into the real potential accrued or accruable from sports.

(i)                In a country, with a population of over 150 million people, only fools can be this thirsty in water. We are not there. With this volume of people can we say there is shortage of human capital?

(ii)             With Universal Basic Education Commission's (UBEC) official figure of over 4,200 primary schools in Nigeria, can we say we don't have enough kids to train?

(iii)           I was told that there over 100 secondary schools in each state of Nigeria. Assume this to be right, that means we have almost 4,000 secondary schools in Nigeria! Yet, we can't produce 4,000 new kids in all sports in a year!

(iv)           With about 120 public and private universities alone in the country, count the HND awarding tertiary institutions and Colleges of Education. What does this tell you?

(v)             Back to Mike Enahoro. He once told me and I believe him, that all the above population is only about 33% of the available youth capital in the nation. With this arsenal, yet, we are a net importer of sporting apparels, goods and accessories. We do not produce for this population! Is this not criminal? With this population, we lack physical health instructors, coaches, trainers, physios, counselors, raw materials processing factories, active and sports supporting tourism locations, children’s sport camping facilities, swimming pools, gyms, and many more basic sports facilities and infrastructures required to ensure active development of our sporting
potential.

IS THE GOD OF SPORTS A SOUTH AFRICAN? God used to live and carry the green passport of Nigeria. That is why He blessed us with excess of all things. Natural and material resources. Weather. Economy. People. Places etc
Things other nations of the world struggle hard to make, we get effortlessly. We are so prodigal yet He kept blessing us. I hold onto sports alone in this analysis. He changed nationality to become a South Africa in 1980.

South Africa has about one third of Nigeria's population. They are so organised.
South Africa has over 110,000 people providing support services to its RUGBY sports structure ALONE. You want to count baseball, football, athletics, etc
Over 500,000 people are gainfully employed in its sporting industry
(direct and indirectly). Ask yourself, whither Nigeria?

Nigeria was said to have spent over N10billion on the 10th All African games in Maputo and came a distant second behind a more efficient and effective South Africa whose total budget and expenditure for the same game since three years to date is put at N3.28m!

In 1999, South Africa hosted the 7th All African games. A week after the closing ceremony declared about Rand80million profit. We hosted the 8th edition in 2003, we spent in excess of N60billion and a debt profile of about N13billion!
Can we all rise and give a resounding applause for the world's best sports prodigal nation!
 
SPENDTHRIFTS AND WHIZKIDS: Compare these great levels of financial investments in sports, all of the following emerging and developing countries like Cuba, Kenya, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, put together do not spend what Nigeria spends in a year. Yet, we are in terms of output never near them.

Our financial  investment levels are comparable to those of France, USA, UK, Germany etc. While those countries count huge returns on investments, the Nigerian State and local governments cannot boast of any significant payback for the taxpayers Naira that has been spent.

Where does my weird thinking leaves us? Are thinkers available to ask questions? Agitations are rising. I see another war blooming soon. Who quenches this fire?