Sports Guard: Happy to be back
By Patrick Omorodion
For 56 days since September 1, 2011, I took my annual leave as mandated by my bosses to rest my nerves after some weeks of hard work. I resumed last Wednesday, refreshed. So many things happened during my absence but even before I went on leave, I was kind of pissed off with happenings in our sports and decided to lie low.
I am not a student of literature but I know that Professor Wole Soyinka wrote that the man died who keeps quiet when things are going askew around him. I have decided to come out of my cocoon to continue to be on the side of truth and justice and so created this column to air my views in support of Nigeria’s sports.
My annual leave coincided with the All Africa Games in Maputo, Mozambique and I was privileged to attend and see first hand how Team Nigeria struggled to better their fourth position from the 2007 edition held in Algiers fours years ago.
No matter what anyone says, Nigerian athletes did their best in the circumstances and missed the second position by whiskers to Egypt. But for the taekwondo gold medal Chika Chukwumerije lost to his Ivorian counterpart, Nigeria and Egypt would have tied at 32 gold medals and Nigeria would have placed second with her superior silver medals.
The Maputo performance was commendable considering the fact that wrestling and weightlifting, the country’s stronghold, were removed from the events of the Games. But the big lesson from the Games was that early preparation is the key to success.
I make bold to say also that the National Stadium in Maputo built for the Games dwarfed our National Stadium in Abuja, also built for the 2003 edition which Nigeria hosted. If for nothing else, for the indoor track and field facility for athletes training during severe cold or winter as you have in Europe. What do you expect, ours was built by an extravagant PDP government, at a cost European experts said would build four of such in Europe.
Another event that attracted my interest was Dr Amos Adamu’s appeal to the Court of Arbitration in Sports (CAS) against the guilty verdict passed on him by FIFA’s ethics committee for his bribe for vote scandal. Over three weeks after the case was heard, no word has come out of CAS but I know the result must be negative otherwise Dr Adamu’s loyalists would have gone to town celebrating his victory. The verdict we will get to know one day, especially as more FIFA bigwigs fall to the corruption bug.
What saddened me most while I was on leave was the Super Eagles’ inability to qualify for the Africa Nations Cup, the first time in 26 years even with the peoples’ coach Samson Siasia in charge. The Super Falcons also followed suit, then Enyimba. Sunshine Stars took a 0-1 deficit to Tunis yesterday against Clun Africain, they too may crashed out as you read this except the unexpected happens.
With all these failures, does anyone need to be told that the real problem of our football is beyond coaching, in essence, beyond sacking of Siasia as Folorunsho Okenla opined at the weekend? It is a much more fundamental issue, resulting from many years of football and sports promotion rather than development.
Administrators, coaches inclusive, cut corners to achieve easy results for rewards from government willing to use sports to calm the frayed nerves of their misgoverned subjects. School sports were jettisoned while fathers and grandfathers masquerading as U-17 and U-20 boys go outside to mesmerise the world and we think we have arrived and are world beaters.
Now that the chips are down, our clueless football administrators foisted on us by a cabal who usually flew the FIFA kite to prevent government from overhauling the administrative machinery of the country’s football, think that doubling players winning bonuses could do the magic and make the teams win matches.
It hasn’t worked because Guineans who were lucky to be promised $2,000 as winning bonus, outplayed the Eagles who were being pampered with $10,000 right on our own soil. The nation is mourning the Nations Cup ouster and fans are cursing but I believe it is an opportunity presented by God to allow us sanitise our football and remove all the unintelligent and incompetent administrators who have refused to allow our football and sports make progress.
To make progress, it is not enough for the NFF to sack Siasia, Eucharia Uche and may be John Obuh and Austin Eguavoen later, as that would only amount to scratching the surface. Those at the helm of our football should know that the game is up.
For an FA that hires coaches on sentiments expressed by fans, it is clear that the administrators are clueless about how to take the game to the zenith. The only other option left for them is to quit now.
