What happened to Obasanjo’s directive?
*Thomas wants to know as he makes case for swimming
Chief Olatokunbo Thomas is a known figure in sports. He once headed the swimming federation and was at a time the vice president of the Nigeria Olympic Committee, NOC. In this interview with Sports Vanguard, Chief Thomas reiterates the preference the government has been giving to football over time and its detriment to other sports as he highlighted other issues in sports. Excerpts:
Swimming has not been doing well and we know that we can do better than that. What is responsible for this poor state of swimming in Nigeria?
Let me first correct the impression about what you have just said. We’ve not been winning Olympic medals and that is very true, But in terms of the African continent, Nigeria is ranked amongst the best countries in swimming. South Africa is well above the rest of Africa in swimming and I can explain that because during the times of apartheid, South Africa was one of the best in the world.
In terms of performance and preparations, these are things that require at least four to eight years. There are so many reasons why Nigeria has not moved to the optimum level. They are lack of facilities, lack of adequate training and the dearth of coaches. Those are factors impending the development of swimming.
How are you coping in the area of funding?
Well, let me use this medium, because it is very important for Nigerians to know the truth about why government seems not to be too interested to fund sports. In 1985, the Babangida administration promulgated Decree 101, in place of the National Sports Commission Act. People thought that was a good thing but unfortunately, instead of sports in general being the base of that decree, it was football that was made the item of the decree.
That knowingly or unknowingly, make football a parastatal of government and that is why the federal government recognises football. Attempts have been made to repeal this decree but all attempts have failed and I don’t know why. Up till today, the only recognised sport in this country is football. Therefore, the government is not obliged to fund any other sport in this country, except football.
So all the sports federations are all Non-Governmental Organisations. So that is why it is so difficult for the federal government to provide funds for an NGO. I think that will explain why the other sports seem to have been neglected since they are not the responsibility of government.
Thomas
To turn to the next question about sponsorship, which is why I am here, the various corporations in this country only honour football because it is the recognised sports by government and therefore, they feel obliged to fund what the government recognises and not what it does not recognise, which is an anormally and that is why you find that most corporations in Nigeria don’t want to sponsor any sports federation except football. So it is head you loose, tail you loose. That is why swimming is where it is. If we have one-tenth of what football has in this country as government subvention, we would perform magic.
Finally, without facilities you can\t train. All the swimming pools in Nigeria are not up to what they have in Cairo, a city. Nigeria has one obsolete federal pool in Abuja. Various states have no pools, local government have none. Additionally most world champions swim seven days a week, all year round. They train in the morning and evening.
It is observed that we have swimmers in the riverine area, why are we not grooming them to become world beaters?
I’m glad that one is not a nouvice. What those people are doing is open water swimming. We encourage people to swim because it saves lives. If you can float, its good. Swimming in a competition pool is different. By being near a river encourages you to swim but that doesn’t make you a champion swimmer.
You might have somebody from Kano becoming a world champion if he is exposed to training with the best facilities. So I want to disabuse the mind of people that being born in a riverine area qualifies you to be a world champion. On why I am here today, Nigeria was awarded the right to host the African Junior Championship in Abuja.
There are 52 countries coming and the date is November 29 to December 7. And because of the huge nature, we’ve approached the ministry and we have set up a committee, of which I’m the chairman. It is the first time Nigeria would be hosting it.
We have set up a committee to help drive the sponsorship hunt. We are reaching out to various organisations to help us with funds.
A whole lot of people from CANA would be present. We have to cater for these people. Technical people would also be there. We are also going to have contingent officials. We have 75 local officials. This is bigger than football. Football is nothing in the Olympics.
Swimming is the number one sports at the Olympic Games. We would have 126 officials and about 1176 swimmers. So its quite big. Each country is allowed to parade 2 swimmers per event. It’s a massive event. We are going to set up a secretariat. The budget is around N300m. We are making sure that we cut it to the minimum level. We don’t believe in excesses.
This is an age grade event so that we can tap them for the elite because the old ones are moving on and this is a chance to find suitable replacements.
Some people in Africa want us to fail and we can’t afford to fail.
Yellow Yeiyah, one of Nigeria’s top swimmers in action
We have not been there in terms of winning medals because there is no permanent training venue for most of the swimmers. The swimmers who are doing well for South Africa are based in the USA. We need funds to bring some of our swimmers who are doing well in Collegiate Games to come home to swim in competitions. If you don’t have functioning swimming pools, how can you bring them back?
And how do you sort that out if the pools are not functioning?
That brings me back to the Decree 101 and how it is affecting other sports. Football was mentioned properly inside the Decree. That is why when they say somebody is the chairman of the NFA, I laugh because he’s just the chairman in name. The real chairman is the Minister of Sports because no matter what the board decides, they can’t do anything without the mandate of the minister. So the minister is really the chairman of the NFA. That is what the Decree says. In law, it is dejure defacto. Well this goes against the IOC and FIFA constitution. FIFA does not say you should not have dealings with your government but that government should not dictate what happen. That is our rule.
When the NSC was for us all, we all benefitted from the same purse. If I may recall, when I was vice-president of the Nigeria Olympic committee, we visited the then President Obasanjo who asked why other sports were not doing well and I responded that the 98% of what the government spends on sports goes to football.
He then turned to the Minister of Sports, then, late Mark Aku and said, minister, reply to what Chief Thomas said and as God would have it, late Aku said I was right. Then Obasanjo said no, this cannot be allowed to continue.
They set up a committee chaired by Dr Samuel Ogbemudia. Their report never saw the light of the day. So the government is aware that all its money goes to football but nobody has had courage to annul or get the Legislature to annul that Decree 101. I don’t know why nothing has been done but it is dragging back other sports to the advantage of football. In addition to that, I’m aware that every year, NSC asks us to submit our budgets, which we always do but nothing comes to us.
