Nigerian football enters into coma, who saves it from self destruct?

Maigari...can he save Nigerian football again?

I have always said it that whatever is the fight or the struggle that is running the game down in Nigeria, the game must and should be effectively insulated. Keen followers of this blog will also agree that eight months ago I had argued, the insulation is temporary. The conduit insulating the game is now heavily leaking. The game is already in a mess. We have a man-made force majeaure on our hands.

The indefinite postponement of the NFF AGM has sounded the death knell of football in the nation. Mark my words again. It will come to pass. As the NFF Board meets tomorrow, can they come off the issues dividing the board?

Clubs and players will suffer:

Can the NFF AGM still hold in this December? Whether yes or no, one thing is sure, the pre-season logistics of the NPL secretariat and the clubs will surely suffer. Had members of the NFF Board understand the technicalities involved in football management, they would have insulated the game from their own dirty politics.

While the ‘opposition’ has been graciously benevolent to have insulated the game from the long battle for the issues of legality of the administration of the game leading to two valid court judgements, why is it that the strange bed fellows who are presently administering the game cannot insulate the game? So sad.

Option? Play abridged league in all the sectors (Premier, Women, National and Amateur leagues). Anyhow it goes, the clubs and the players will be the biggest victims.

Don’t forget that continental championships will start early next season, the Nigerian clubs will not get adequate preparatory matches. Clubs will be playing salaries and allowances in vacuum. Their pre-season which is what clubs used to do a long term preparation to enable players cope with the rigours of the league especially in the closing phases will and in the current situation, cannot be met by any of the clubs. This will open the players to many avoidable fitness related injuries.

Clubs in the continent face early exit: I am afraid that the clubs in the Continent will either have to organize their own friendlies to keep their players in good shape for the continental matches. This is just going to be extra expensive. Had the league been in place, they are sure of at least one match every week with coaches can use to experiment on formation and player blending. To this, I submit my fears, early exit for the Nigerian representatives in the continent.

The Rotimi Amaechi factor: Given that the NFF and Governor Rotimi Amaechi had consistently and in the public for a always disagreed on matters of the Presidential Task force for the 2010 World Cup qualification is on ground. The NFF has not, as it is usual with it, called him all manners of unprintable names. They have a tradition when they disagree with you calling you stupid, dirty language names.

The same NFF people (having no shame or decorum) could apply to the same Amaechi to help them host their AGM in his state. Haba! Though, there are unconfirmed allegations that the top echelon of the NSC had reached the governor to object to hosting the AGM as part of the tools of war.   This does not sound strong but it is tenable.

Two, Amaechi as the chairman of the Nigeria Governors Forum can reach out to all his members not to host the AGM. In this event what is the likely outcome?

Three, Amaechi has two teams in the NPL in Sharks of Port Harcourt and Dolphins of Port Harcourt. He can reach his governor friends to say, please change the FA chairmen in your states. After which they can be briefed. They can also brief their representatives in all the leagues. The briefing can be, go and impeach the Board of the NFF. Is this not feasible?

NFF crisis: The untold stories behind the scene

*Board meeting to hold tomorrow in Abuja

By Olajide Fashikun

The crisis within Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) which was a subject of speculations has taken a new dimension with secret meetings and plots allegedly being hatched among the topmost members of the football administration against themselves.
Already, the 15-man board are in two clear camps. The crisis is helping the tattered Nigerian Premier League (NPL) to be unable to meet statutory conditions to commence the 2012-2013 season months after it should have started. 

Baribote...sidelined on London deal

Informed sources say money, distrust, northernisation of the secretariat and the issue of the NPL may have caused the deep rift in the structure of the NFF. As it is, the internal struggle for supremacy and control continues unabated.
Usurpation of NPL in a foreign deal:  On the 20th October, Aminu Maigari and the Chairman of the Technical Committee, Chris Green, travelled to London to broker a deal with IMG Limited in the UK on behalf of the Nigeria Premier League, (NPL). One of them has denied this though but our source insist they are not telling the truth.

As close as their lackey, Victor Baribote is to them, the duo went on the trip without the knowledge of the League Board.
However, the two top shots lied officially that they were going to get a new jersey for Super Eagles against the African Nations cup in South Africa. Neither does any other board member of the illegal NFF know of the true intent of the London trip.

Former scribe of the NPL, Salihu Abubakar, was working out modalities for Victor Baribote to go and reactivate the deal the NPL had signed with the English Premier League when Chief Oyuiki Obaseki was the chairman. The paucity of fund was said to have held the move back.

By FIFA prescriptions, all league boards are supposed to be semi-autonomus of the NFF. There was no way the NFF could have entered into any deal on behalf of any of the leagues.

Genesis of the crisis: The recent crises started when the Football Federation released a statement accusing the NPL of misappropriation of funds following an audit report. The federation queried the Nigeria Premier League management and ordered the suspension of the League's Congress which was slated to hold in Kano.

The Congress was meant to, among other decisions, finalise on a date for the commencement of the new Premier League season.

Jinxed?

Plan to sack the NPL board: There were two theories here. One the Minister, Bolaji Abdullahi was touted planned to sack the Board and bring his political mentor, Dr. Bukola Saraki in as Chairman. This could not be verified.

The second is, some members in the leadership of the federation want to stop the league from moving forward, they do not want the calendar to be in accordance with the rest of the world so that Nigerians can call for the dissolution of the NPL board."

Another board member pointed an accusing finger at Mr. Green as being behind the crisis in the football body.

Christopher Green factor:  A board member who is so angry at the way things are organized in the secretariat told a close friend of his, “Christopher Green is the problem of Nigerian football. He has taken over everything and he gives orders like he want in the secretariat. Most decisions he has made are not in accordance with the NFF statutes and other board members are not aware of so many things before it was done," he alleged.

Owumi...insulated the game in his fight

The Vice President, Mike Umeh, is not in the know of what goes on there. Most members are in the dark. No one knows what is going on there. He and Maigari took the decision to suspend the NPL Congress without the knowledge and approval of other board members.

"The board has not met on the issue of NPL Congress till date and as I'm talking to you the Board is divided," the official said.
A board member and Chairman of the Akwa-Ibom State Football Association, Effiong Johnson, also alluded to this in a statement he released against Barrister Iyke Igbokwe during the week.

The board will decide a new date for the AGM of the Nigeria Football Federation, (NFF) in their meeting of 28^th November.
A top official of the Federation informed www.gongnews.net of the meeting of tomorrow at 11a.m. They have informed us of the meeting” he said.

How Qatar bought 2022 World Cup hosting

*The Amos Adamu connection

Joseph Sepp Blatter...you can see how clean our hands are in FIFA

It is a front page story with the headline “World Cup probe over mystery $1m offer” published today by TheSundayTimes of London. It is revealing, indepth, well investigated and what else? This is the latest expose of how the 3022 World Cup bid had the taint of bribery.  Enjoy the story yourself.

The paper’s intro: FIFA’S top investigator has been called in to examine evidence that the winners of the right to host the 2022 World Cup secretly offered $1m (£630,000) to the son of one of the voters.

Documents passed to Fifa by The Sunday Times show the Qatar bid team offered the cash to Samson Adamu, 26, the son of Amos Adamu, the Fifa executive committee (exco) member.

The money was to fund a dinner and workshop on the eve of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, though it cost a fraction of the sum offered.

The deal was brokered by Ali al-Thawadi, the deputy chief executive of the Qatar bid, months before the contest in December 2010 to host the 2022 World Cup.

He denied knowledge of the offer when contacted last week. However, after being presented with our evidence, Qatar 2022 lawyers accepted there had been discussions and a contract had been drawn up, but said the team had later backed out of the deal after considering the “relevant Fifa rules”.

World Cup bidders are prohibited from entering into any financial relationship with relatives of the 24 Fifa exco voters.

Fifa said it had “immediately” passed the Sunday Times evidence to Michael Garcia, its chief ethics investigator, for examination.

Insight: Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake

Inside page story: SAMSON ADAMU seemed less than self-assured as he stood to address the candlelit ballroom packed with the great and the good of African football on the eve of the World Cup in Johannesburg in 2010.

The 26-year-old entrepreneur looked sharp in a well-cut black suit and a crisp white shirt, but he spoke falteringly as he welcomed the 300 eminent guests he had invited to a gala dinner celebrating the continent’s football legends.

Samson had every reason to feel on edge. The dinner was being hosted by a fledgling company he had set up just months before. He was straight out of university and had no experience of organising an event on anything close to this scale.

To add to the pressure, his formidable father Amos Adamu, the Fifa grandee, was watching closely from a nearby table in full Nigerian costume as his son assured the glittering crowd that his company had “no commercial affiliates” and was driven by one pure goal: “To celebrate with you the achievement of our past football heroes.”

The reality was far less clear. As the guests sipped champagne, enjoyed live African music and their three-course dinner, they may not have stopped to wonder where their young host had found the funds to provide them with such a lavish evening of free entertainment.

Secret documents seen by The Sunday Times show that Samson had been offered $1m to arrange the dinner by the Qatar committee competing to host the 2022 World Cup, months before his father was due to vote on which bidder should be allowed to hold the tournament.

Amos Adamu was one of 24 members of the Fifa executive committee (exco) which decides where the World Cup is to be held — bestowing international recognition and billions of pounds in revenues upon the winner.

With so much at stake the competition can get dirty and Fifa rules expressly prohibit bidders from entering into any financial relationship with the voters or their relatives to prevent improper attempts to influence the outcome.

This newspaper has uncovered an extensive paper trail which shows how Qatar offered to pay Adamu’s son the seven-figure sum to host a dinner and workshop. In the end this cost about a fifth of the amount on the table.

Ali al-Thawadi, the deputy chief executive of the Qatar bid who had brokered the deal with Samson, denied any knowledge of the arrangement when he was first approached last week.

When presented with this newspaper’s evidence, Qatar admitted that the deal had been negotiated but said it had later pulled out after taking Fifa’s rules into consideration.

The funding of the glittering dinner remains shrouded in mystery. Invoices seen by this newspaper indicate that the event, called the African Legends’ gala dinner, cost about $220,000, a sum apparently way beyond the means of Samson’s company which had been set up months before with only £4,000 in share capital.

Qatar says it had no financial involvement, no other sponsors were publicly linked to the dinner and guests were not charged for their tickets.

The oil-rich Gulf state has been forced to fend off a string of bribery allegations since it won the right to host the 2022 finals in December 2010 — but no smoking gun has been found.

Qatar, a tiny nation of 1.6m people, won with the support of 14 exco members despite having no football tradition and the prospect of temperatures of up to 50C during the summer, when the competition will be held.

Its bid committee vastly outspent every competitor in its campaign and Jerome Valcke, the Fifa general secretary, admitted in a leaked email that Qatar had “bought the WC \”. He later said he was referring to the vast amount of money spent on marketing the bid.

Amos Adamu was secretly filmed by The Sunday Times in September 2010, three months after the African Legends’ dinner, offering to sell his vote on the 2018 World Cup for a payment of £800,000 into his personal bank account, which he said he would use to build football pitches in his native Nigeria. But his 2022 vote was not for sale because he had already pledged it to Qatar.

Fifa later sacked him from the executive committee. He was stripped of his World Cup vote and banned from football for three years.

This newspaper wrote to the Commons culture, media and sport select committee last year to report that it had also filmed three former Fifa grandees claiming Qatar was offering large sums of cash to African voters. The allegations have never been proven and are denied by Qatar.

The evidence that the Gulf state had secretly offered Adamu’s son a vastly inflated sum to host the African Legends’ dinner has emerged in emails and documents passed to The Sunday Times by a source working for a powerful figure in world football.

Payments to the relatives of officials are a sensitive area in world sport. The Olympic movement was engulfed by the worst scandal in its history when it emerged that the Salt Lake City team bidding to host the 2002 Winter Games had made payments which benefited a voter’s daughter.

The emails show how the plan for Qatar to pay Samson to host a football dinner was hatched between the young entrepreneur and Thawadi.

The pair first met at the Confederation of African Football (Caf) congress in the Angolan capital of Luanda in January 2010, which was sponsored by Qatar. Thawadi emailed Samson five days later asking for the name of his “personal company” in order to send him a “contract and scope of work”.

Soon after, Thawadi sent Samson a contract for the “Legends of African Football — Gala Dinner — Sponsorship”.

The document states that Qatar agreed to pay Samson’s company “a fee of US$1,000,000 (One million United States Dollars)” for “sponsorship rights” of the dinner to be held in June 2010 alongside a workshop for African journalists.

The agreement is between Kinetic Sports Association, a Swiss company which Samson planned to set up, and a “private institution” in Qatar “which is bidding to host the 2022 Fifa World Cup . . . and wishes to acquire certain exclusive rights in connection with the events in order to promote its bid to host the competition”.

The signatories on behalf of Qatar were to be Sheikh bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the bid chairman and sixth son of the emir, and Hassan al- Thawadi, the bid’s chief executive.

The next step was to get the elders of African football on side. Samson lobbied the Caf executive to get behind the dinner at a meeting in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, on February 20.

In an email to Ali Thawadi two days later, he enthused that Caf had assured him of its “total support and willingness to grace the occasion”. He went on: “Caf’s support is good in that it adds more credibility and prestige to our event.”

Samson then arranged a meeting with the Qataris at the Intercontinental hotel in London on March 4 to finalise the agreement. His Swiss lawyer, Daniel Magerle, was to fly over with him.

Emails show Magerle had offered to assist Samson by setting up a Swiss association and a bank account which could be used to channel the payment for the legends’ dinner. “The relationship to Switzerland would probably add a lot of additional credibility to the project,” he wrote.

Samson’s Nigerian company, Kinetic Sports Management, is registered at his father’s high-walled villa in a wealthy suburb of Abuja, Nigeria’s capital. His brother Philip, a dry cleaner by trade, is named as co-director.

By creating a separate Swiss entity called Kinetic Sports Association with its own bank account, the payment would have been placed at one remove from the family firm and cloaked by Switzerland’s secretive banking system.

Magerle encountered a snag, however. UBS, the Swiss bank, refused to open an account “as Swiss banks are very sensitive these days and international pressure has increased on certain matters”. He quickly offered a solution: Samson could ask for the cash to be paid into his own client account.

The email trail ends on March 2, two days before the planned meeting in London at which the contract was to be finalised, when Magerle emailed Samson to say he planned to book his flight the following morning.

When approached last week, the lawyer initially refused to comment. But after speaking to Samson he came back to say the meeting never took place because the deal had fallen through. Nor had he gone ahead with the plan to set up a Swiss association.

Magerle said he did not know why the deal had broken down or how the dinner had been financed, but he assumed Samson had found some other source of ready cash.

This newspaper’s investigation has found that shortly after the planned meeting in London, Samson had sub- contracted the organisation of the dinner to a South African sports event company called Champion Tours.

A prominent African journalist said Amos Adamu had approached him in March to ask for help in finding former football stars to honour at his son’s dinner. The journalist said he was later told by Samson that the event was to be paid for by “friends in Qatar”.

Sources close to the dinner say organisers were driven to distraction by the lack of co-ordination by Samson. No running order or table plan was organised and he did not arrive at the venue, the Vodaworld Events conference centre in Midrand, Johannesburg, until two hours before the gala was due to start.

At the 11th hour he announced that a further 30 places had to be added for extra guests and told the organisers to hire eight hostesses and have special costumes made. A seamstress had to work through the night to get the outfits ready.

Samson also brought in a fixer called Nadia Mihindou to help him with the dinner. When approached last week, she said the event was largely paid for with “private funds” arranged by Samson, but she did not know where the money had come from.

When told that Samson had been offered $1m by backers in Qatar to pay for the function, she responded incredulously: “Wow, what a number . . . honestly, if it was a $1m event I would know it.”

The dinner, held on July 8, was attended by eminent football figures including David Dein, the former Arsenal chairman, and Lennart Johansson, the former Uefa president.

The members of the Caf executive committee kept their promise to “grace” the event with their presence, as did about six Fifa exco members.

Around 20 famous African footballers, including Kalusha Bwalya, the former Zambian winger, and Jomo Sono, the former South African midfielder, were flown to Johannesburg and honoured at the dinner. The guests were welcomed by Issa Hayatou, the president of Caf, and Kirsten Nematandani, president of the South African FA.

An early guest list drawn up by Samson shows that a table of eight was initially reserved for Qatar 2022, but no one from the bid team attended.

It is not clear whether any of the powerful figures who attended ever knew of Qatar's planned involvement, but there was a distinct air of discomfort when this newspaper raised questions about the dinner’s funding.

Nematandani’s face clouded when the subject was mentioned during a meeting with reporters at his office in Johannesburg earlier this month. He said he had no idea where Samson had found the funds to host the dinner but did not think it was his business to ask.

Asked if he would be surprised to learn that Qatar had offered to fund the event, he said: “It depends on how the news would reach me.”

Molefi Oliphant, a Caf exco member who had attended the dinner, became angry when a reporter asked how it was funded, telling her she was a “bad girl” and hanging up the telephone.

Neither Samson nor his father responded to detailed questions about the dinner or its mystery funders. Qatar has always insisted that it conducted its bid with the utmost propriety and within Fifa’s rules. It states categorically that it had no financial connection to the dinner and no one from the bid had attended.

The Sunday Times has complied with an official request by Fifa to hand over a cache of emails, invoices and documents relating to the legends’ dinner.

A Fifa spokesman said: “After receiving these documents, Fifa has immediately forwarded them to Michael J Garcia, independent ethics committee chairman of the investigatory branch. It will be for Michael Garcia to analyse the documents and decide on any potential next steps.”

This report was culled from The Sunday Times of London 18th November, 2012.

Why the NFF stopped the NPL Congress

Baribote...the crown prince of the League protected

A lot of Nigerians have praised the decision of the illegal Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) for stopping the Congress of the equally illegal (see  Justice Okorowo of the Federal High Court Abuja’s judgement).

Unconfirmed sources within the NFF at a place in Abuja had a Freudian slip where it was revealed that, some members of the NPL Congress had met, deliberated and agreed that the only way forward was to sack the NFF crown prince of the League, Victor Rumson Baribote.

That would have paved way for one of the people the NFF does not want to see their face to have been pushed up to the rank of officer to manage the League. It was a chess gambit and the stoppage order came to rescue ‘home boy’ from disgrace.

Meanwhile, the NFF has not been able to decide what to do in respect of the Auditors’ Report which found Baribote to have allegedly not well managed some of the funds. He is recommended to return some monies in the region of N30m.

How true this is remains to be found out. With this theory being feasible and realistic, will the Congress of the NPL do what is right and correct or be recruited to take small cash and do what is not in the best interest of the game?

…Tricking the polity of Nigerian football

Maigari, Jalla...where lies peace for our football?

 I can reveal that if there is peace in Nigerian football, that will mean an end to the survival of some people. To remain relevant, these set of people have to stoke the trouble from which cash and promotion is guaranteed.

Recently, there was this report that Harrison Jalla, President of NANF was arrested by the Police for allegedly defrauding a player to facilitate a foreign club contract.

It was officials of Aminu Maigari’s NFF that were busy sending the reports to facebook and twitter. It turned out that Jalla was abducted, arrested on a Friday, meant to be kept till Monday if at all he will be bailed.

The police did not incident the arrest. The meaning? It was “jankara”. He was denied to take any of his phones.  He got his freedom after the Police kept him for 24 hours. He sued the Police for N50m and Ademola Olajire for N20m.

Not too long, Jalla’s name was smuggled into a list of “top bankers” the Police declared wanted. One question is, does the Police no more know Jalla’s contacts? At least, they know his house and office addresses in Abuja and Lagos. He was declared wanted in respect before a court of law.

See the thread? On 3^rd November, 2011, a Friday, the same NFF through Chris Green, used the Police to invade National Accord newspaper to arrest me. Before you will say uhm, the NFF goons were on facebook and twitter. They sent e-mails to Editors to use the story.

At the Police, what is the charge? Libel and defamation of the character of an organization. Laughable. The Police helped them to arrest and detained my laptop and hard disk for 39 days.

Our Police, a veritable instrument of oppression and injustice have remained ignobly available to shut down any “opposition” so long as the price is right.

With these trend, why must people go to court to seek justice when you can employ ‘self-help’ tools? We are nearing there. Courts remain a reasonable and most important tool for civilized persons.

The same NFF went to court and got a judgement that was tinted in their colour. It was widely reported in the media but the judge CANNOT make the same judgement available. See how the judiciary is also made to wear the jersey of corruption?

Very soon, you will find people in our football will be wearing bullet proof cars and vests. They will employ bodyguards, thugs and allied structures to manage our football.

Remember I once predicted the referees will be killed with the mad way and manner the affairs in the league were being conducted.

The following season, 2003, it happened. We are arriving in the state of anomie. Welcome to the bedlam of the beldam of our football.

EXTRA TIME: I have started praying and fasting that the Aminu Maigari are able to, as planned, get a long extension in the contempt trial in the Federal High Court Abuja so as to concentrate on winning the African Nations Cup in South Africa.

Two, they deserve a new term since the Congress has been ‘pampered’ enough to vote them back to office. By the time they will leave eventually may our football not become so desolate.

Is the attendance in championships not a sign of growth and development? Even if, as usual, we pack very old people in small bodies to play in cadet championships while we cannot deliver in the senior level.

Ikhana...bye to Falcons.
Is he, like Nigerian coaches bad?

IKHANA: I recall the day Shaibu Amodu was finally sacked after his third missionary journey. I said it on AIT’s Sports File, that whoever comes up after him for the next 15 years will suffer the same pain and fate.

Can we count? Samson Siasia. Now, it is the turn of Kadiri Ikhana. Stephen Keshi is making use of the best of average players but the truth is, does he not deserve more quality players?

Until the day we admit that the way we go about things now is simply wrong and will never give us any new result shall we do what is right. Where is the nursery to train our footballers from an early age?

The failure of the Super Falcons in Equitorial Guinea is a fact that our football is dead. Is it the coach’s fault? When we return from South Africa without the trophy, will they sack Keshi? Does failure of the teams reflect the technical inability of the coach?  See how we have placed the right foot into the left shoe?

Eko 2012: Monumental fraud hits Lagos team

Eko 201

Lagos state, host of the National Sports festival, tagged Eko 2012, is facing a daunting case of fraud which can threaten the performance of the teams being packaged for the event which is expected to be won by the hosts given their age long and extensive preparations.

Athletes representing the state will by early next week proceed on a protest march to demonstrate the ill treatment and pilfering of their monies by senior officials of the state government.

According to our reliable sources, “each coach is supposed, on paper, to be paid N80, 000 whereas what they get in reality is N50, 000 which is N30,000 short.”

Every of the athlete representing the state who is expected to earn N48, 000 is shortchanged to the tune of N10, 500.

As it is, the athletes are not sure when they will proceed to the closed camp as part of the anchor leg of their attempting to win the National Sports festival. They are angry. There are insinuations that the closed camp is being delayed to allow the pilfering officials cash the funds of the days they have spent outside of the camp presently.

NASCOM: Where we all faced the twilight of hope again

Odegbami...sacked NASCOM head.
Discovered in primary or secondary school?

I have pretended not to see or hear about the NASCOM project. I had to play my professional role as a reporter by reporting the pre- and post events of the dissolution and reconstitution. 

As an individual, it has been a matter I wanted to refuse to make comments on. But with the avalanche of questions I have had to answer physically from those who know and requested my position, from messages on my facebook and a few of my friends on BlackBerry, I was beginning to wonder if I would not mind saying the relative truth i believe on this contentious issue.

You will recall when the NSC bought into the idea of the NASCOM issue at the very beginning, I contended that that was supposed to be a secondary step we are taking without putting in place the foundation which was supposed to be a primary school-based project.

I eventually found out later that certain egg heads had put together the concept and brought in some other human and material structures to support and deliver the project. I did a follow-up report saying that some other people should endeavor to do the primary school bit as a wholistic project. I also recall a caustic response on my blog where someone accused me, like every Nigerian journalists, of being good critics and not being able to do something practical. And also added why can’t I go to start what I was suggesting instead of criticising those who had put some actions together.

Here we are. In a worse junction from where we were coming from. The sports minister, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, caused the dissolution of the NASCOM board under the leadership of Chief Olusegun Odegbami, himself a product of school sport. 

Yes, like I once argued when some colleagues who took me up on the propriety of the minister’s action. I recall vividly saying that, so long as NASCOM draw monies from the public till, the minister has and reserves some rights to have done what he has done. 

Usain Bolt of Jamaica. Now 22 years.
Was he discovered in secondary school?

Now, the minister has reconstituted the same committee with newer and fresh minds with Terms of Reference (ToR). I have read same. I have asked how these terms will translate to reality of real sports development. the ToR raises the question about the difference between growth and sports development.

What we are doing is like taking up kids who did not start primary school but say because they are advanced in age should just go and start from secondary school because they can by their age easily catch up with what they would have lost if they had started from primary school.

Secondly, like the Team Nigeria and the Nigeria Sports Lottery concepts. Some individuals started the ideas, and invited the National Sports Commission (NSC) into it. Only for the NSC to take it over. Where is the stake of the original designers of the NASCOM project now? They have lost out to a bigger partner who was to use her institutional presence to drive the project. Uhm!

Thirdly, I insist that we are not doing the correct thing with the secondary school project. I, like many of those who competed for this country, were all discovered and nurtured from primary school. Very few got to secondary schools to pick the latent talents we had.

Fourthly, competition is not and should not be the major object of any sports development project. Competition is a function of growth. Training is the ingredient of development. Now, where are the coaches that are supposed to train these kids at any level if at all? How are these coaches to be engaged to train the kids? In which sports are we looking at? Where will the equipment come from? It is only after these issues are settled can competition as part of the exposure for their growth become paramount.

Right inside the minister’s office is Saleh Alhassan Yakmut. He was Nigeria’s volleyball captain for years. He was a product of primary school sports initiative. He matured in the secondary school from where he worked up on the progression chart to play for Nigeria. This is a repeat of our own stories. Name the athletes from the 1980s to date. It was the era of Patrick Ekeji’s generation that actually started from secondary schools. In both instances, coaches from the state sports councils go to the schools to impart the correct rudiments of training.

I proceed on break. Catch you all later.