OPINION: The problem with Nigerian sports

The Nigeria Football Federation has been in the news headlines lately. The news has not been good because Nigeria’s national teams, from U17 to the flagship Super Eagles and Super Falcons, have failed to qualify for World Cup outings. For the Super Eagles, it was back-to-back.

The news has been compounded by the upcoming elections to the Federation’s Board. Calls for the resignation or outright ouster of its president, Ibrahim Gusau, are viral. It is so outlandish that Super Eagles legend, Segun Odegbami, even called for the postponement of the NFF elections. Tampering with the inner workings of member federations in FIFA is anathema in Zurich, where football’s world governing body is located. The emotions are definitely in overdrive.

If only it were the emotions, we might have been able to live with it. Still, reputable news outlets like Arise News and The Guardian have joined dark-alley websites to promote all manner of fake news, reporting the arrest of NFF board members by the DSS, the resignation of some NFF board members, the dissolution of the NFF board by the federal government, et al.

For me, though, the problem is not just with the NFF or Nigerian football alone, but with Nigerian sports and the way we run it. No serious country or, put in another way, any country that wants to win Olympic Games medals, let alone gold, will run sports the way we do in Nigeria.

Most sports federations in Nigeria have Boards. Members of the boards are elected. While the electoral processes are home-grown, they often require approval from international governing bodies such as Fédération Internationale de Football Association, World Athletics, FIBA, etc. One common issue with local governing bodies is interference from either the Ministry of Sports or the National Sports Commission, something that is clearly and decisively frowned upon by the world governing bodies. But the Ministry/NSC still does it anyway.

One cannot fault this iron-cast decision by sports governing bodies that precludes interference from anyone, including the president of a country. Just imagine what the likes of the immediate past Minister of Sports Development, Sunday Dare, did during his tenure. He caused D’Tigress’s withdrawal from the 2022 world championship in Sydney, Australia. That was not all. Dare started a feud over a $2.76m sponsorship and licensing deal the Athletics Federation of Nigeria had with Puma. And we are talking about a deal that was already in place before he became the Minister of Sports Development.

While the kits were in Nigeria, Dare did not allow them to be used, and things became so bad that Nigerian athletes ran into a shortage of kits at the 2022 Olympics because one man had issues with a deal he was not part of.

It was clear that Dare was riding roughshod over people and structures elected to boards, to the extent that he dictated the venue of the 2022 World Cup qualifier against Ghana to be Abuja, against the coach’s wishes. In fact, he almost forced himself into training with the national team. Coach Gernot Rohr wasn’t amused.

What about another former Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung? Things he would have done had he had unfettered control over the NFF, given the one too many impasses he caused with his preferred candidate and relative, Chris Giwa, after the election of Amaju Pinick as NFF president in 2014, can only be left to imagination. Again, it was intriguing because Dalung came into office over a year after Pinick was elected. Yet, he still used his office to cause lots of altercations over an election that had been held before he came to office.

At your advent, President Bola Tinubu, the Ministry of Sports gave way to the NSC, with Shehu Dikko appointed chairman and Bukola Olopade as director-general. By its name, a Commission is supposed to focus on personnel, like the Civil Service Commission or Teaching Service Commission. In addition, a Commission is supposed to have commissioners or a board. Currently, this NSC has gone far beyond personnel issues, and no one else sits at the apex of the commission besides Dikko and Olopade. It leaves a huge gap.

Let’s assume the enabling legislation allows the NSC to do more than just personnel issues; the NSC’s efforts to stubbornly lord it over federations that have elected boards have become a serious and, at times, annoying concern. It’s not just now. It’s been happening in earlier iterations of the NSC and when we had a Ministry of Sports Development. I believe the NSC’s negative, overarching influence is the bane of Nigerian sports as we speak, and it is time that, as the President of Nigeria, you wield the big stick. For me, you are Nigeria’s most reformist president, meaning you have more than what it takes to come into this matter and change the face of how Nigerian sports work.

The Civil Service Commission has never tried to run ministries, departments, and agencies. At the sub-national level, the Teaching Service Commissions don’t run schools. Not even the Ministry of Education micromanages schools at any level. They handle personnel matters, put policies in place, set limits, supervise, and provide oversight. Someone also needs to break this down to the NSC. The more irksome thing is that when federations like NFF fail and, of course, this current NFF did not do well, the blame should go around, not on NFF alone.

Everybody is blaming the NFF, but what about the NSC? When the Super Eagles tried to qualify for the World Cup through a protest against the Democratic Republic of Congo, we never once saw the NFF President, Ibrahim Gusau, address the public; rather, it was always Shehu Dikko. The NSC was clearly the face of all the nonsensical shenanigans in our football debacle, to the extent that Dikko even misled your good self, Mr President, on the World Cup qualification. Recently, there was an announcement that the prize money for the Nigerian Premier Football League winner is now N2bn, and players’ salaries can no longer be less than N2m per month. Dikko made this announcement, even though the NPFL chairman should ordinarily have made it.

Whether it is the Ministry of Sports or the NSC, they obviously like to steal the spotlight, but when the dung hits the fan, they disappear and start blaming federations like the NFF. Case in point, Mr President, was when you used your good offices to approve the release of N12bn for the payment of all backlogs of players’ and coaches’ allowances, as reported by major media on January 7, 2024; there was a Ministry of Sports, which did not release the funds. But now, only the NFF is seen as an anathema. It supports the assertion that it is a systemic problem in our sports that can be corrected.