Senate and Reps: Sports Committees of shame

Senate President, David Mark

With the shrill voice of Tijani Babangida hitting for a deserved call on the NFF board to buy shame and honour and resign, I markedly looked at my watch and realized this most likely must be the nation’s most unfortunate year since 1960. We have never been this worsted. Measure from football, handball (in Maputo, Angola beat us with a margin of +30?), basketball, weightlifting, boxing, athletics (with a barrage of over-cheating and use of frauds as ‘coaches) or even, wrestling. Scrabble and chess has been one ray of hope.

Fly back to football. If people do not know when to resign, we, the people of Nigeria, the original owners of the game, have an obligation to ask them to leave. If they play the deaf and the dumb, when the patience of the people boil over and decide to protect their commonwealth, who will want to intervene?

Did the wise sage not postulated that, “he who makes peaceful change difficult will make violent change inevitable.” I read of the efforts of a legitimate group, FOOTBALL ALLIANCE OF NIGERIA, that applied to the Inspector General of Police, Hafiz Ringim, of their intention to have a peaceful match on the Glass House. They applied for permission. The police has not deemed it fit to approve or disapprove same. Playing with the emotion of the people?

PARLIAMENTARY HOUSES OF HORROR: In some nations of the world, when a matter is being discussed in the parliament, it feeds you with so much awe and confidence because the discourse will be intellectually stimulating, sound, logical and above all, in the national interest. Alas, it is the reverse in our own nation.

Debates over what to do with football (sports)  from the Senate and the House of Representatives left many of us wondering what manner of people are therein. Not even motor park analysts will make the untutored quality of opinions that were published in the media therefrom. I thought if the members of the committees have no inkling of what is going in in the reality, they are supposed to have researchers who will be in tandem with the realities and best international practices in the industry and options that are firm and good for our nation.

These men reduced the entire issue to the fact that no Nigerian team qualified for any major championship in 2012 and saddled the illegal NFF with ‘commendations’ and slammed Patrick Ekeji (in a most undiplomatic Moroccan interview with a phantom journalist) whilst we also know that the same committee members some months ago sang a different tune when they journeyed to Maputo for the All African games. Is this journeying with Team Nigeria part of their oversight functions? Are they not busy enough with more serious issues in the parliament? Or is it the little cash here and there that is still attractive to them to warrant them speaking like a drunk tun?

The tune of these calls suggest that if we qualified for the 2012 Nations Cup, have the Olympic teams in London, and the numerous age grade teams won laurels, then we would have been a great sports (football) country. Members of the Nigeria Football Association would have been on line for national honours – we would have been happy.

DECEPTION, OUR NATIONAL WAY: We are deceived by a plethora of ‘sports illiterates’ who sit in parliament. We, (the media) deceive our readers the more. Our administrators are trained in the swift art of lying. Deceit has helped us as a people over the years to lose perspectives and face reality. Deceit is and has been our road-map. We are involved in football (like in sports) for the immediate gains of counting medals and making a bountiful living from it (ask the administrators). We fail to understand the motive of the motley crowd that gathers around sports, ever arguing, ever scheming, screaming and deriving joy from the crowd (watching live games and from the television or by the radio or from the pages).

We determine how well sports is doing by how much cash (Naira and foreign currencies) we profit from sports. I know so many people who are presently lamenting the lost opportunities (in terms of monies they will make) if we had qualified to be in London, Libreville and other spots football would have taken them in 2012. The tears are not for the cessation of the game’s growth. Nobody is crying for the millions of young people who can make a meaningful living from sports, but whose future has been twisted by the greed of a few who became full-time workers in the Glass House.

WHERE PARLIAMENT ERRED BADLY:

Who is taking responsibility for the COLOSSAL losses? Yes, colossal. Not just football. The trend is the entire sports industry. Who will fix the future if we are not concerned about the present? Why is the Nigeria Football Association unable to operate by legal standards? What is complicated about being law abiding? Why must judges be sadly manipulated to give orders that made courts a jesters “Crack ya ribs” stage. Oh! Judiciary, this is a sad development.

The football board is an illegal body. We have been at this for many years. An illegal body that calls itself Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is an affront to all of us, our laws, and our capacity to implement those laws. Yet, the Senate and the House of Representatives are simply blind to these issues. A football board that has a penchance for forgeries. Will it be fair to think whether the parliamentarians were induced to think in a myopic prism?

Anyone who has been a member of the Sports Committees of the National Assembly should be ashamed of his role in this perfidy. How could the National Assembly for years approve funds for a legal NFA and it is spent by an illegal body known as the NFF, yet, it does not mean anything to them?

RULING PEOPLES DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE PERFIDY: does it make a meaning to us that the PDP does not have a sound social welfare, youth, women, sports and community development policy? Do they have a philosophy as to the governance of the people of Nigeria? Ask. Think. Review and see my drift.

Have we not wasted 2011 even from the perspectives of not qualifying for any international competitions? Does it not mean anything to our diplomatic and international relations gambit? In view of the situation on ground, are we thinking of stemming the tide against 2012 and beyond? How are we preparing for 2012? What efforts are we putting in place to improve in sports in 2012 and beyond?

If I have my way, the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on sports should sit down, apologise to their electors, admit the error of judgment they passed earlier and magnify their lens’ view to answer these questions and postulate a fresh, statesmanly, distinguished and honourable thoughts which will and should make people have faith in our collective tomorrow. I siddon dey look dem together.