WETIN SPORTS CONSULTANTS DEY DO SEF?

Mike Enahoro, one of the nation's sports consultants

 A SEMINAR PAPER DELIVERED BY MR. OLAJIDE FASHIKUN AT THE ANNUAL LUNCHEON OF

THE KWARA PROFESSIONALS

IN ILORIN ON

SATURDAY 22^ND OCTOBER 2011

AT KWARA HOTELS BY 4:00PM.

KICK-OFF:

The importance of sports consultancies cannot be undermined in serious nations where sports has been seen and taken as a business. In Nigeria, sports has remained a social welfare function thus, the deep interest of governments. Whereas, in small African nations, sports is a private sector driven process. Before I go into the nitty-gritty of this paper, let me quickly put you on the same page where I am. 

WHAT IS SPORTS CONSULTANCY ABOUT? Even now, when I get to some people and they ask: what do you do for a living? And I reply: sports consultancy. The next thing is some frown and cannot hide their thinking of, what’s this all about again? Sports consultancy is a branch of management consultancy. Its been recognized as a useful professional service that helps managers of sports to analyse and solve practical problems faced by their organizations, improve performance, learn from the experience of other managers and organizations in similar climes, as well as, create new business opportunities.

Public and private organizations world over turn to sports consultants for the purposes of their training needs, project management, information technology, consulting, financial advice, legal advice, audit, engineering consulting and other professional services.

Sports organizations initiate technical cooperation with similar sports organizations with an eye to better where they are presently standing in the matrix. Sports consultants midwife and deliver these services. Essentially, I can say it in a milder less academic manner that sports consultancy is a method for improving management and business practices of an organization. It developed into a profession. Thousands of people and organizations now take it as a full time job striving for professional standards in the quality of advice given clients, method of intervention and ethical principles.

WHY DO WE NEED SPORTS CONSULTANTS? Managers of sports institutions by their work schedules do not have the proper training, time and luxury of research to meet the ever increasing needs and demands of their organizations. For instance, let’s take a state sports council as an example. Government funding has dwindled over the years. There are no equipment for coaches to train athletes. Funds for attending competitions do not come in good time. Most coaches now are secretaries of their associations, pursuing files and monies after training the kids. They are simply over worked. Above all, how much are they paid commensurate to their service. The sports councils are no more employing. These are problem areas.

There is definitely need for outer and independent sources to solving this problem. The right source whether we like it or not is the sports consultant. So, the question is, why do we need the sports consultant? Our clients have some generic functions that unites them, they are:

1.      They have social, political, economic, organizational purposes and objectives for which they were initially established and are supposed to achieve;

2.      There are problems of management, funding, operational and business to overcome;

3.      There are new opportunities which current structures may not allow them to be able to meet;

4.      There are troubles of learning new models of doing their jobs as it is in the advanced nations of the world due principally, due to paucity or scarcity of funds;

5.      Change is an every day tool. One question is, by the current structures, how do we implement changes? Given that government agencies are built on tradition whereas, sports is about meeting the speed of light with which change is the operative word;

From the familiar environment, it is possible we appreciate that, a “problem” justifying the use of a sports consultant can be appreciated from an examination of a scenario. Thirty, twenty or ten years ago, where were we? Where are we now? Are we better now or worse? If we are better, then, we don’t need sports consultants. If we are worse, there is an urgent and pressing need for sports consultants. This is a simple test.

A second perspective to answer the question if we need sports consultants is: the “problems” we face and seek to manage, does it bother around these ilks? If yes, then, we need sports consultants:

Ø  Complaining clients (in this case, the athletes, their parents, suppliers, kit manufacturers, the mass media etc)

Ø  Poor results in terms of investments;

Ø  Loss of sponsorship market;

Ø  Missed opportunities;

Ø  Reluctance to change;

Ø  High staff turnover (where also quality retiring staff don’t have replacements);

Ø  Inability to retain trained athletes especially the very talented and good ones;

Ø  Unrealistic self image (where your staff is not a fulfilled and happy one);

Ø  Consistent lack of cash to achieve set objectives. (This can become a frustration agent);

Ø  Idle facilities and sports pitch resources;

Ø  Lack of self confidence;

Ø  Bureaucratic slow speed of action (this is given that modern sports organizations are managed on the flat management schedule unlike the pyramidal structure of the civil service);

Ø  Internal and weak institutional processes;

If you have a sports organization or sports council that is running on these “problems” then, you need a sports consultant critically. Ordinarily, given our experiences with the Delta State Sports Commission and the Ekiti State sports Council, we have a tradition of not accepting the client’s perception of the problems on the face value. We did our own independent assessments and what we gathered were essentially different from what were presented to us as the problems. Though too, most of the presented problems were true but the depth and magnitude we found were different from what were defined for us. To verdant sports consultants in training, I tell them always, “define the purpose and not the problem.”

NEW OPPORTUNITIES IN SPORTS MANAGEMENT: Not until we took the consultancy of managing an international chess tournament named after Professor Wole Soyinka and designing a school-based chess training programme (which Sani Mohammed, the President of the Federation insisted we have to combine with a CHESS FOR PRISON programme) did we appreciate the value of newer opportunities in sports in Nigeria. Our initial thinking was to help our clients come out of their difficulties. We were fortunate to have staffers who think out-of-the-box. We set out the client (here, the Nigeria Chess Federation {NCF} as very ambitious, well managed and successful client). We created new information and data which they had but never employed, we developed new markets and products (synergizing Innocent Egbunike known with athletics with chess), thinking of new technologies (voucher means of raising funds), improving quality, optimizing financial management of whatever we raise, involving communities and parents of trained kids, etc

From experience, strong business corporations have developed interests in organizations that have their type of business orientations. That is why it is difficult marketing the current structures of the state sports councils. Even the sports federations, many of them that have bureaucratic structures make no meaning to the big spenders. Ask yourself why is Scrabble, Chess, basketball federations better primed in the business world? Scrabble and chess because of their quality of organization will make meaning to big spenders but the corporations usually are interested in the number of eyes that follow the game.

Since football has consistently failed them, their options are volleyball, handball, basketball, baseball, etc  Of this population, only basketball have the organization that exudes confidence in them to invest.

WETIN SPORTS CONSULTANTS DEY DO SEF? When I was with the Nigeria Sports Development Fund Incorporated (NSDFI) in Abuja, a man asked the question in Warri during one of our plans to start a community tennis programme: ‘wetin sports consultants dey do sef’?  I recoiled and used my job schedule as the basis and explained:

a)      We provide information that are not feasible to the client (which they have but take for granted) which the corporation needed to buy-in into the product);

b)      Create and manage specialist resources;

c)      Create, establish and link business contacts and linkages;

d)      Provide expert opinions on the products being sold;

e)      Undertake diagnostic work;

f)       Develop action plans that will yield outstanding results that were not there before;

g)      Develop new systems and methods that are practical and productive;

h)      Planning and managing organizational changes;

i)        Training and developing management and staff to run the new schedules;

j)        Counseling and coaching (this has to do with a feedback mechanism, leadership style, work habits & relations, personal staff qualities & domestic management of their problems, creating social support systems for the staff to enhance their work productivity;

THE NIGERIAN SPORTS INDUSTRY IN FIGURES: If we agree that the Nigerian nation is having a population of 150m. Having taken the budgetary allocation of 31 states (including FCT) and that of the National Sports Commission (NSC) including the professional sports clubs (football and basketball), it is sad to report that the entire money that comes to sports can be approximated to N5billion.

Whereas, Enugu Rangers, 3SC of Ibadan, Kano Pillars and Enyimba of Aba will generate between themselves an average of N1.4billion if I am to ‘sell’ them as private properties. Between these four clubs, I can in 18 months generate a base value of N5.6billion which is more than the entire income that the whole nation’s sports live on.

There is no market that is as big as the Nigerian in Africa. Every sensible and reasonable sports kit manufacturer wants Nigeria. What kills their interests in the quality of corruption and lack of management. Why must government put money into the Nigeria Football Association (which also calls itself the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF)? That is a brand that can generate as much as N3billion yearly with its properties if maximized. The Super Eagles, the Super Falcons, the Nigerian Premier League alone cannot generate less than N1billion yearly.

Imagine a proper organization of handball and volleyball (with their beach variants) added with the maximization of the current rooms in basketball. Think of the new employment opportunities that will be open and available. Sports alone can take up more than 35% of the current employment space in the economy, occupying the youths’ minds with more productive engagements and an assured future.

Now, tune your minds to the multi-disciplinary athletics. Ever since the 1980s, the regeneration that was to be in athletics was never gotten. Even when Engineer Adeyemi-Wilson came on board, we looked forward to a maximization but it was from bad to worst. The new setting is skewed to below zero. The nation is deceived with fraudulent results that cannot stand the test of time whereby we take 25 year olds to a tourney for 20 year olds. We bring drug couriers as coaches, coaches insisting on sleeping with the girls. God help the girl that has courage to say no, they yank her out of the national team despite her talents. I know of a practical case in my hand.

While other nations went to the All African games with their youth athletes we went with our AA team and all we could scrape were 10 medals which we celebrated to high heavens! Check the list of participants, no nation whose athletes were in the world championships in Daegu brought the same athletes to Maputo.

It is sad and I quickly presage that the employment of Mr. Innocent Egbunike which some of us had fought tooth and nail for will not yield the desired result. Like Emelia Edet, the immediate past national athletics coach said, you can’t employ Egbunike and choose his assistants for him. He is supposed to choose his own assistants. Are they offering him official car and accommodation? Is his employment towards London 2012 or Rio 2016? If it is for 2012, his employers must have been in bad dreams. If for 2016, their reasoning will be more ideal and practical. Forgive me for taking you deep into one of the many areas of our realities. Its all to stress what kind of management decisions we have been wrongly taking.

Whereas, as a consultant, if the AFN is employing an Innocent Egbunike, a global brand, I will tell you, I can ‘manufacture’ another N750m in 12 months to build nurseries in six states of the federation at no cost to the government. If Egbunike will be a businessman to the core, given the business angle on his hands decides to bring on board such brands like Tony Osheiku, Harrison Momah, Pat Itanyi, Adewale Olukoju etc I see no reason why I cannot deliver N2billion. I see no reason why I won’t have at the least, twelve circuit events all sponsored before another one calendar target. What are talking about?

ADDED TIME: We have come to the end of the match. We are in the added time. Nigeria is a place where if we decide to use sports to strengthen our youths, there will be practical hope on their calloused fingers. They will be taken out of crime. They will become kings and queens of the world. Some years back, when in the world you mention Nigeria, we are more popular with our athletes but today we have lost that aura. Where did we get it all wrong?

Must we wait for Abuja to show the states the path to go through? No. Every governor and commissioner for sports can take the initiative to be the bigger change agent. A ‘good’ sports consultant is enough to guide your state to the Eldorado. In months you can start to count how many lives and employment opportunities you had by one decision changed their lives.

We all owe this great nation the duty to make it greater than we met it. There is corruption and crises all over the environment. We breathe the oxygen of these wrongs but one man can make a forest. I am a change agent. I have gotten disciples and acolytes who have become greater than I do. Change one person and our ilks increase.

I want to thank the organisers of this luncheon for considering me out of the over 149million Nigerians to present this paper. I feel honoured and humbled. In all, I hope I have tried to be just and fair as to meeting your expectations with the time limit within which I am to have done this.

Like a mini-skirt, I hope it was short enough to cover the subject matter and long enough to attract the required intellectual crowd and attention.

Thanks you all.