The whole incidents of last two weeks put Nigeria and Nigerians under so much pressure leaving us with so much to talk about, so much to argue about and fight about but eventually things are returning to normal.
NFF board dissolved, Super Eagles banned from competing for two years and of course the FIFA ban we expected.
Reason eventually prevailed and Mr. President changed his mind but is that how this whole fairy tale ends?
Do we all live happily ever after? Do we still plan to restructure Nigerian football or was our beef just against Lulu, Uchaegbulam, Ogunjobi and Ojo-Oba? If so we have achieved our aim, right?
But that really is a discussion for another day so I plan not to digress so much.
Mr. President, we beg you to disband the sports ministry, or National Sports Commission, NSC, or whatever name they go by because they have completely embarrassed Nigeria at every turn.
Mr. President, people have put their hopes in Nigeria at every Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games for the last ten years now and all they get is heart break, some may have even died.
Nigerian athletes now resort to taking drugs so much that our country has been scandalised because they keep getting caught.
But what have our sports ministers done about it? They simply do not care. There is just too much interest in football to care about 37 other sports.
Whatever happened to Boxing? When I was a kid growing up I read about the exploits of Nojeem Maiyegun, Dick Tiger Ihaetu and Isaac Ikhouria.
I also watched boxers like Davidson Andeh, Ngozika Ekwelum, Peter Konyegwachie, Obisia Nwankpa, Jerry Okorodudu, Joe Lasisi amongst others do well for Nigeria on the African and World stage.
But where is Nigerian boxing today? Dead! And this is because we do not care anymore because of football.
In tennis I watched the likes of Nduka “The Duke” Odizor, David Imonite, Tony Nmoh, Godwin Kienka amongst others take Nigeria to the top of the tennis rankings at least in Africa but right now I seriously doubt that any one knows Nigeria’s Davis Cup group.
I can go on and on to swimming, Handball, Basketball, Volley ball, track and field and the story is the same- Sports in Nigeria is dead! And ironically, the football we so crave for is dead too.
Whatever happened to that great handball team, the Grasshoppers of Owerri? Whatever happened to table tennis where Nigeria were clearly the best in Africa and used to even contend with the Chinese in world Championships?
Mr. President, we cannot continue like this.
What is the brief of Isa Bio? He was announced as Sports Minister and he immediately began to do NFF business.
Yes we thank him for sorting out the hotel issue, the air transport issue and of course helping to remove Sani Lulu but was that his brief?
Does it not have anything to do with sports development, participation, winning, amongst others that would benefit Nigeria and Nigerians?
Do they have a budget at the sports ministry? What do they do with it? How come we do not have regular competitions by our sports people to develop them?
Mr. President, we have seen your hand and we know that you want to develop football, but at the Olympic Games football can only give us one medal, if at all we get it; at the All Africa Games, football can only give us one medal, if at all we get it.
But events like swimming, chess, athletics and gymnastics will give us tens of medals if really we have a developmental program in our sports but do we?
No, Mr. President, we don’t because we have not really had a minister of sports or chairman of the National Sports Commission but Minister of football and chairman of the National Football Commission.
The World Junior Athletics Championships start soon but are we going to win anything or are we just going to participate so we can grab allocation money and estacodes?
The Commonwealth games start soon but what is the target of Nigeria? Is our target to win medals or to go on another jamboree?
Maybe we should also ban the sports ministry and our athletes from taking part in international events while we rebuild Nigeria’s sports.
It is not enough for us to keep focusing on football because the future may not be football.
It is time for us to rebuild Nigeria’s sports and the time is now.
Let people like Amos Adamu, Patrick Ekeji and Isa Bio be called to answer questions on how they have administered Nigeria’s sports and how they plan to do it from now on.
Let us see genuine change Mr. President.
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