By Joe Apu
THE furore that greeted the just concluded sports federations’ elections has been described as unnecessary by former Athletics Federation of Nigeria president, Dan Ngerem.
His reason is that Nigeria has continually failed to take the right steps to correct the anomalies bedeviling sports in the country.
While reacting to the complaints by various camps in the elections, Ngerem said: This election scenario has been with our sports for many years and really not the invention/creation of the current Honourable Minister and his Ministry, besides, who pays the piper sometimes call the tune.”
Proferring a solution to the issue, Ngerem called for a sports policy that will be all enduring and not a situation where every minister that is appointed creates his own.
“Put together a sports policy framework that no Minister (in transit to his next elections) can change and/or manipulate for whatever reason. Every new Minister designs his own electoral guidelines – what type of a country are we ….,” he querried?
“Soonest we will all go to sleep after the initial ‘gragra’ depending on if our fa- vorite candidate won or lost. Furthermore, and very soon it will be time to sports travel and earn estacodes – of course most federations are penniless and the Team Nigeria concept to help raise sponsorship funds was allowed to die with active connivance for sports stakeholders.
“Believe me once it is travel time and budget is out – as usual it will again be: “all quiet on the western front.” The ‘war’ will now move to international fed- erations where we go and wash our dirty linens in the full glare of the world.”
Looking ahead, Ngerem, called on stakeholders in Nigerian sports to put to- gether a permanent election guideline and/ or fine tune all the other ones that were done by various Sports Committees and Presidential Committees in the past – and, proactively position the guidelines for the next election.
“My number one suggestion is that hangers on, under employed people
and dislocated people that prey on these federations should be eliminated and most importantly anybody without a day job should not even near any federation board not to talk of chasing to be President. The BVN et al can be used to double check tax returns and sundry issues on individu- als. If we don’t take the initiative now it appears we may wind up as just another ‘talk shop’.”
The sports administrator and business- man wondered if there is any Nigerian sports federation today that has a positive cash balance in their bank accounts and can run their secretariat in their own building and/or rented office without government support.
“Why are we glossing over these is- sues – it is all about positions in sports federation boards where most members contribute nothing. Is serving Nigeria by force and should being a board member be someone’s day job?