Nigerian sports since independence: 52 years of underdevelopment, undermanagement

Abuja National Stadium pitch before sports minister got it renovated some days ago

National Stadium Lagos' pitch today

Its stands are also falling apart

Dilapidated team benches at the National Stadium, Lagos. Photo by tonerophotoagency.blogspot.com 

Today, Monday, October 1, Nigerians celebrate 52 years of independence. But for obvious reasons, celebrations are not as loud as usual on the sports scene because people are beginning to realize that all is no longer at ease with the country as far as that industry is concerned. A cursory look at contemporary happenings in Nigerian sports clearly points this out.

To start with, the Super Eagles on Sunday began camping for the October 13 qualifying match against the Lone Star of Liberia. The country is battling (quite uncharasteric of its former self) to pick a ticket to the 2013 edition of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON). Although coach of the team, Stephen Keshi and the top echelon of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) keep assuring otherwise, there is great fear among the citizenry that the Eagles might lose the ticket to Lone Star, a relatively unknown soccer team on the continent.

Also, the Nigeria Premier League has been put on hold by the sports ministry because of the numerous problems facing the one-time most popular aspect of the country’s sports scene. Presently, the league is faced with several antagonistic factions over issues ranging from poor management of league football to misappropriation of finances and misinterpretation of rules and principles. The solutions to the problems seem too far to seek.

Furthermore, the country’s contingent to the 2012 Olympics in London returned empty-handed to the country after billions of naira went into its preparations and remuneration. So much hope rested on the contingent that it was hard for many Nigerians, including the President, Goodluck Jonathan to believe it had failed to pick even a medal. A development that the country believed was long behind it after amassing years of experience in participating in the global multisport event. The country was eventually so grateful that it handed national honours to Paralympians that suffered, battling hard to drag the country’s name out of the mud.

In other less popular aspects of the country’s sports industry such as golf, the situation is worse. Professional golfers in Nigeria live off the good grace of club members at golf clubs due to poor management of the golf industry. Although several attempts are being to set right this aspect of Nigerian sports, the perfect recipe is yet to be found. Professional Nigerian golfers hardly play on good tours like their South African counterparts that are reckoned with globally. The same is the story with basketball and many other sports.

Additionally, the country missed out on the last Nations Cup cohosted by Guinea and Gabon, lost an Olympic spots for the men’s relay teams in Port Novo, Benin and has continued to fall behind in producing necessary incentives for growth of sports in the country.

Such is the case with the country’s sports now that outsiders do not come to see how much it has developed over a period of time, but how far it has fallen apart. A good example is the recent visit of the international news network (CNN) to Nigeria to see how much the golf industry has depreciated.

On the level of maintenance, the country has ranked really low. Many important facilities have been left to rot just like several other social amenities across the country. The Abuja National Stadium was rated one of the best ever built in Africa just some years back. Until just some days, it fell to the spot of being a blot on the Abuja horizon as its facilities fell apart.

A National Assembly team that visited the natural pitch of the once glorious edifice admitted that it was unfit to graze cows not to talk of playing good football. The stadium that cost billions of naira to build was reduced to such a state in less than ten years due to mismanagement and lack of maintenance. And it is not the only one. The National Stadium in Lagos was not differently handled. Today, the once glorious edifice that hosted the All Africa Games in 1973 and the Nations Cup in 1980, stands rotting away in Surulere. Several other facilities attached to the stadium are not receiving better treatment. The Olympic-style swimming pool is unfit for use because filled with green algae with several parts of it rutted.

The indoor facilities like the gym and basketball court, lack necessary equipment as they have been stripped to bare essentials over the years. The National Institute for Sports (NIS) in the stadium’s premises is no better. The hostels are falling apart, the classrooms too. The story is the same at other sporting facilities across the country.

The situation has become so unacceptable that even the national football team that was once the pride of the country is affected. Coach Keshi recently complained that the team did not have a standing home ground like the many other sporting countries of the world. Even Liberia’s Lone Star has the Samuel Kanyon Doe (SKD) Stadium.

This culture of letting facilities and systems fall apart has been the bane of the development of the country’s sport industry since 1960. It has now come to the point that Nigeria now relies on facilities outside the country to train its athletes. Nigerian players have to play abroad to earn a shirt in the national team, the athletes have to be US or UK-based to earn attention from national coaches and so much more.

The saddest part of it all is that Nigerians are not catching on fast with the change times. People still expect the various sports teams to deliver as outstandingly as those that pay close attention to what Nigeria does not. A clear example is seen in Nigeria football legend, Segun Odegbami’s writing off of the Lone Star before the first leg of the AFCON 2013 qualifying match in Monrovia. The 2-2 draw that resulted has since changed the mathematical one’s mind. Also, Nigerians, including the president unwittingly expected Team Nigeria to return with carriage-loads of medals from the Olympics in London when the team lacked the perfect ingredient to get the job done.

In all, this year, 2012 has been a eye-opener for Nigerians that are now beginning to realize how far the country has fallen below the required standards for a good show. And it all began with little mismanagements here and there and lack of maintenance and developmental culture. Indeed, remembering the great heights the country’s athletes reached in various sports between 1960 and 1990s and the fall from grace since then makes one realize that the problem had been there all along since 1960.