Shall we tell the minister?

It is doubtful if the Nigerian sporting sector has ever witnessed a bad turn like we are seeing presently. From athletics to football to boxing, we are at the lowest ebb with confusion across most of the sport federations. If our relay team are not being disqualified from competing because of doping, our football team to the Olympics will be stranded in Atlanta without money to pay for hotels or to move around while preparing for a competition that commences in few days’ time. Just as the Nigeria Football Federation is still shopping around for a foreign technical adviser for the Super Eagles, whatever that tag means, our position in the FIFA rankings continue to be in a free fall from 22 in 2009 to 70 in the latest ranking released last month.

True, these problems predate the coming into office of Solomon Dalung, our current sports minister, but ever since he assumed the leadership of sports it has been from one problem to another. With his boy scouts-like uniform – apologies to those who are members or leaders of that wonderful club – one does not get an impression that Mr. Dalung actually has what it takes to superintend the ministry. For someone who appeared in a well-cut black suit, white shirt, and black tie at his screening to now start dressing like a boy scout ostensibly in solidarity with poor citizens as he claimed in a media interview, it is a cheap way of scoring populist points. While only him can confirm whether his popularity rating has improved since then, sports in Nigeria has nosedived under his stewardship.

The buck of our sports stops at his table but he has not served Nigeria well at all. His needless intervention in appointing a captain for the Olympics team without recourse to the Nigeria Olympic Committee is typical of the ‘big-man’ syndrome of our leaders. In a team that parades individuals who have been at four and even five of such games, Dalung unilaterally appointed a rookie as captain. Feelers from the camp now is that the captain appointed by the minister will not carry the nation’s flag but the assistant for the opening ceremony. Why this confusion? Yet under his watch, athletes were asked to source funds and pay their ways to Rio in the hope of a later refund by the ministry leading to some of them using gofundme, a personal online website for individuals and charities, to solicit for funds. Dalong’s defence was that the athletics federation letter to that effect was written without his consent.

To show further that things are bad for our athletics under Dalung, a report on CNN.com on Saturday, July 30 mentioned how a video of the youth team competing at the IAAF World U20 Championships in Poland surfaced where in an interview with Athletics Africa, Godwin Ashien, a member of the U20s men’s relay team lashed out at the lack of support from the administration. “Nobody cares about us,” he said. Right from Nigeria… down here… even coming from Nigeria to Dubai, we didn’t eat for three days, we didn’t eat.”

Just last week, the only person that won the Africa Cup of Nations as a player and coach in Nigeria, and the second in Africa, was buried without any input from the federal government despite the promises made to that effect shortly after his death. Stephen Keshi’s remains were laid to rest in Illah, Delta State with the government not playing any role at all. Dalung’s excuse was that the government will cater for the family Keshi left behind after promises of a state funeral, and later “fanfare” were unfulfilled. Interestingly, Togo, where Keshi worked and ensured qualification for the World Cup played a memorial football game to honour their former coach.

Michael Phelps, the American swimmer and most decorated Olympian of all time, with 22 medals in three Olympiads always come to my mind whenever I think of how unserious we are with Olympics. Phelps first won a medal at the Athens games in 2004 as a 19-year old but he was at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 without winning a medal. In an interview with the New York Daily News after the Athens games, Phelps said it took him seven years to prepare for an Olympics medal, yet we always want to throw money at our athletes on the eve of the games and expect wonders. It will never work. That’s why news that $3.49 million has been released for Rio Olympics should worry all Nigerians; it might be money down the drain as we have neglected the athletes for long.  A case of too little, too late.

By the way, who supervises Dalung as sports minister?