By DANIEL ESEBRE
The recently concluded National Sports Festival would have ended abruptly. That would have been a disaster for Nigerian sports.
Understandably, after three postponements occasioned by the COVID 19 pandemic, the host, Edo State, became fatigued and repeatedly communicated this to the Federal Ministry of Sports, owners of the property. It was agreed that the Federal Government would support it to cushion the financial strain. So, they agreed to go ahead.
The Honourable Minister of Sports was expected to have stepped on top of the responsibility to negotiate and deliver the promised financial support even before the opening. The support was not delivered even as at the close of the games.
Getting frustrated, the host threatened to shut down the event midway. The ministry countered, ungracefully. It said it was not aware of any threat to the games, that the LOC did not communicate its stress to the MOC. It also gave no clear assurance on the delivery of the support, merely saying it believed the fund was being processed.
It took President Muhammadu Buhari’s and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s direct assuring calls to save the festival.
It is a wonder how the Minister could not manage such a critical issue through diplomatic inter-governmental relations before the host got on edge. It also speaks volumes that the Minister of Sports failed to appear at the closing ceremony of what is Nigeria’s biggest sporting event.
While that played out, the ministry opened another spoil spot. It requested the LOC to expel the President of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, Engr Ibrahim Gusau, with Sunday Adeleye and Pepple Young, Technical Director and General Secretary, respectively, from the games.
He described them as men of “questionable character” whose presence “highly disturbed” him.
Their offence? They are in “litigations with the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development and by extension the Federal Government” and are undermining his efforts to reposition the AFN, he said.
Fact of the matter: Ibrahim Shehu-Gusau was elected AFN President in the 2017 elections into the board which also appointed Sunday Adeleye as Technical Director and Pepple Young as General Secretary in a congress. In December 2019, some minority board members claimed to have held a meeting where they impeached him and declared Hon Olamide George the new President. The ministry sided with them. Gusau sought redress at a Federal High Court. In July 2020, Justice Chikere A. I. nullified the purported impeachment and reinstated Gusau and co. The Court of Appeal reaffirmed them in a subsequent ruling in September 2020.
In the meantime, both World Athletics and the Confederation of Africa Athletics have continued to recognize Gusau’s leadership of the AFN.
Considering their pedigree in services to Nigeria sports and their affirmation by the courts so far, it would be despicable mischief to describe such men as “questionable characters.” It is also a misconstruction of democratic values to suggest that they are enemies of the state or of Nigerian sports for seizing their right to seek redress in court.
The courts are established and funded by the government to settle disputes between it and its citizens and institutions, as well as among themselves. This cannot translate to enmity in any civilised contemplation of good governance.
More worrisome is how we will manage this officially sponsored conflict in the relations and communications with World Athletics. This may be the real distraction that will undermine Nigeria Athletics, come Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
But that, even, will only be mere wind before the rain. The biggest imminent damage from the prevailing mismanagement of ministerial/institutional relations in Nigerian sports may be against our football. The Super Eagles stand a high risk of difficulties in prosecuting their qualification matches to the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup.
While the NFF leadership managed to survive the barrage of attacks with various unfounded allegations of corruption in the last ministerial regime, it now faces more sophisticated orchestrations aimed at systematically distabilising the Super Eagles by deliberately denying the NFF of funds to prosecute its programmes.
The target may be to achieve a propaganda of failure to “break” President Amaju Pinnick’s doggedness against sundry ministerial tendencies and blackmail his leadership out of the way.
The practice is in session. While President Buhari graciously approved about N3.3 billion as far back as July 2019 for the NFF to fund the last AFCON and pursue its other campaigns with the various national teams, the ministry did not place premium on pursing the release of the fund for close to two years, even when the approval was subsequently reduced to about N1.5 billion.
Thus, the NFF managed the 2019 AFCON without the government fund as approved. It returned to pursue the just concluded Cameroon 2021 AFCON qualification matches against Sierra Leone, Benin Republic, Lesotho, prior engagements with Libya, Tunisia and Algeria, the Super Falcons camping activities and other programmes of the junior national teams, still without the fund.
Part of the fund, about N770m, was released only recently, in March 2021. The sum can only go to cover part of the expenses on various logistics, players ticket refunds, match bonuses, allowances on the 2019 AFCON and a few of the matches in the recently concluded AFCON qualifiers.
The NFF had kept squeezing with sponsorship funds which do not sufficiently apply for all the activities of the eleven, or so, national teams.
It gets worse with the prevailing high foreign exchange rate and in the backdrop that it takes about N200m for a Super Eagles home game and N300m away.
The Super Eagles have about ten matches to play to qualify for Qatar 2022 World Cup. With the determined strategy of financial strangulation, it sure will get tougher for the NFF.
Pinnick and his men have to produce new and strong marketing tricks to survive the national teams. No thanks to the prevailing global economic climate and the pandemic in which most brands and organisations are mostly concerned about sustaining their operations than offering sponsorships.
Even as they struggle with that, the toxic propaganda and de-marketing of the NFF continues.
While the NFF was busy trying to manage the Super Eagles last qualifying matches against Benin and Lesotho, the Minister gathered with some friends for a conference in Ilaji which only culminated in the usual bashing of the leadership of the NFF and the LMC by persons who have had privileged stints with Nigerian sports without producing any conviction on the claims they make.
No father takes pleasure in de-marking and frustrating his son but the onslaught may have been reinforced by the NFF refusal of requests to remove some of its top integrals in preference for some stooges of the new power.
Still, it’s all Pinnick’s fault. He is also an establishment person who would not publicly speak out. He prefers to contend silently with intrusive and, sometimes, disruptive power, but he should know that, if the Super Eagles fail to qualify for Qatar, God forbid, he sure will be roasted. The ministerial clan will have a good laugh for mission accomplished in crashing Nigerian football in his hand.
It will be naive of Pinnick to think that that would not rub off negatively on the current esteem he enjoys in world football.
As he remains a high flying toast in FIFA, CAF and world football circles, thanks to the well-informed and unalloyed support of the Nigerian Presidency, he should know that not many are pleased.
For instance, top world football officials are not amused by the irregular communications and enquiries to FIFA and CAF from Nigeria sports establishment often with negative suggestions on compliance with directives on the application of funds remitted to the NFF, though they understand it is all intended not only to create an international misimpression against Pinnick but also to source weapons to get him and his leadership down, back home.
It is known that while the Chief of Staff to the President took time off to reach out to various country ambassadors in Nigeria to canvass support for Pinnick into the FIFA Council, our Minister was in communication with Ahmad Ahmad seeking something else, even when he knows how adversarial the dethroned CAF President had been to Pinnick. That prompted Ahmad’s boast that he had the support of the Nigerian minister against Pinnick, to the shagrin of a number of veteran Francophone journalists in the corridors of CAF.
It was probably for that reason also that when the Presidency adviced on the necessity to call a press conference to publicly and officially declare Nigeria’s backing for Pinnick, our Minister found reasons to avoid attending and speaking at the event, until the Permanent Secretary rose to the occasion.
Love or hate the individual, the sports establishment must understand that Nigerians will not accept failure to qualify for the next World Cup. We must be well prepared to play on and off the pitch.
Off pitch, Pinnick is our captain. After his election into the FIFA Council, he also was inducted into the CAF Emergency Council, the strongest caucus that advices the Executive Committee. We must make the best use of him at this point to realise our targets.
Then we must fund the team properly and not pretend that the NFF can sustain all the national team programmes through sponsorships alone, especially under the difficulty business atmosphere with companies.
We had cause to set up a well funded Presidential Task Force, headed by then Gov Rotimi Amaechi, to pursue our qualification to the 2010 World Cup. That experience underlines the seriousness of the matter.
Point is, a sector divided against itself cannot prosper. Sadly, our sports is doing that both at home and in the international arena.
It behoves ministers not just to support their institutions, but to inspire confidence in their leaderships and pull together in unity of purpose towards positive goals.
Power is not merely for intimidation. The disposition to hostility and braggadocio against critical sports institutions and their leaderships is an ill-adviced ill-wind that will blow Nigerian sports no good. We have time to re-assess and retrace our attitude.