It is akin to the expression of a table tennis player who has a weak looking service with which he outwits his opponent over and over again. I have come to know that smile for over a decade and half. It does not openly jeer at you, but it has the ability of riling you up, when you have come to recognize it.

Dr. Amos Adamu is a wealthy man. A former Sports Minister revealed that obvious fact in a frenzy of what we felt was unholy admiration.

There is a lot of money floating around in Nigeria. It has been so since a certain Head of State asserted, with embarrassing frankness, that our problem in this country was not in making money per se, but in how to spend it. And so, he proceeded to mis-spend it.

Thus we now have too much money in politics, too much money declared by the banks as profit, too much money in sports, and so on. And the fall outs drift into many directions.

So, when His Eminence, Anthony Cardinal Okogie, and the Roman Catholic authorities are fondly tossing up the sum of 19 billion naira for the establishment of a university  and we know that they are not a religious institution that will ever settle for second best  you may fell astonished that Senator Heineken (I love that name) Lokpobiri declares 35 billion to be mere “shickenfeed” for staging a football tournament.

The lawmaker, who chairs the Senate Committee on Sports, is in a position to feed high on the hog. Unlike the Senate, the Roman Catholic Church is not at the level of those who can order hundreds of cars as the spirit moves them. Of course, the Spirit will never move it to such action.

When the Federal government first backed down from hosting the FIFA   U-17 Tournament, I was one of those who supported that decision. But, at the same time, I had the intuition that the entire drama could amount to no more than a storm in a teacup.

I felt that Dr, Amos Adamu would find a way of swinging it back on line. When the volte-face came, as it had on several other occasions, I was more hurt than surprised. I said to myself, “Ah, Adamu has done it again!” When the man went up to exclaim that even the sum of 35 billion naira was a paltry sum for the project of a junior football tournament in these hard times, I was sure that he must have said it with that certain smile. How wrong can you be!

The truth was that he had reached the end of his runs, at least, for this innings. He had been virtually removed twice earlier, but had made a startling comeback on each occasion. He would perhaps have stayed the course even now if he had not been somewhat over confident. He was a deft hand at riding the storm. A guardian angel seemed to have piloted him over hills and valleys of a perilous passage all these years, through lair or foul weather. 

I have marvelled at how he surfaces in the most unlikely places like, for instance, as the Sole Administrator of football. It was while holding that position that he traveled to Australia arriving too late for the event, apparently with foreknowledge of his tardiness for the occasion. It was mentioned in the papers at that time, but nothing came of it.

As the Director of Sports Development for over ten years, he elevated that post to becoming “first among the equals”. He effected little innovation, presided over negligible development, and could point to no creative discovery that emanated from his efforts

. Rather, his tenure was a picture of falling standards in performance, a gripping deterioration in morale and an appalling decline in our international prestige.

He presided over the sad situation as it worsened from year to year with consummate calmness, while others who felt concerned smarted and, sometimes, raised an outcry that fell on deaf ears.

But, in marked contrast to the nation’s fortunes, Dr. Amos Adamu prospered. He had his own charming ways. He once got me to produce the opening of a tournament for him at a time I was blaring out against one of his peccadilloes.

(He got me up really from a sick_bed and, after a successful show, forgot to say, “Thank you.”) He became a member of FIFA executive committee, a respected member of CAF, and the President of WAFU, all without holding a substantive position in Nigerian football.

But whilst the pastor was growing fat, the congregation, as it were, were getting lean. The late Chief A.A.Ordia was President General of the Supreme Council for Sports in Africa (SCSA); Dr. Gboyega Efunkoya was in world table tennis; George Segun was Secretary of African Table Tennis; Austin Akosa was the same for African Tennis; Dr.Olu Asekun was in World Swimming; Eddie Aderinokun was in International Volleyball. We had good men on the board of international sports.

I would not wish to even slightly suggest that Dr. Amos Adamu has anything to do with the depletion of our sports administrators on the internationals scene, but his own ascendancy has been strangely isolated.

However, it is on record that he once gave a whopping sum of one million naira to a sports administrator to fight his way through to the chairmanship of African athletics, and that is commendable. But there was no official support, and that counts in these matters. A bit of official help might have been more significant and more successful.

To transfer him to Special Duties might not be exactly what he merits. The closer you get to the man, the more surprised you sometimes get that, out of so much capability, so little could have been mined.

On one occasion, I burst into his office to lay out a long line of issues that I personally resented in the conduct of national sports. As he listened, with that certain smile which I have always distrusted, I grew more vehement.

Eventually he calmly brought out one document from his file. It contained several suggestions, some of them on all fours with my complaints. It was addressed to the Sports Minister whose comments left me aghast.

It was a work that was based on sound knowledge of the terrain of sports in this country at that time, and the recommendations had captured the essential details of how the difficulties could be effectively tackled. I did not know that he had it on him.

I had to admit that he was perhaps not only being misunderstood, but also underrated to boot. He put the document back and shrugged. “Nothing is being done about any of it,” he said.

That notwithstanding, one could not help holding him responsible for several shortcomings of sports administration in the country. He is a man of no mean influence and ought to have been able to achieve much more, especially in the area of creativity and initiative.

He seemed preoccupied more with his own personal advancement and ego, than with the progress of his project. I know I shall miss him, although no voice has been more stringent in the call for his removal than the one emanating from this page in recent times.

All the same, we may not have seen the last of him in top sports administration. Like a cat, he appears to have the proverbial nine lives, and maybe he is still counting. After all, there is still the position of the Permanent Secretary.

Senator Heineken Lokpobiri will miss him too. They seem to share the same viewpoint on almost every subject dealing with sports. It was one of those opinions that earned Adamu the boot out of the Sports Commission/Ministry. How much confidence does the Senator feel he has left among the sports pundits, and sporting circles in general in this country today?

He has not shown, even before now, that he has a lot to offer Nigerian sports. The Senate President, David Mark, will be doing this nation a distinctive service and the Senate a favour, if he would gently separate Lokpobiri and the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Sports from each other at this time.
 
Have you heard?

“Let us use this whole imbroglio of the floating billions: 37 to 35, to 17, now 9 billion naira budget to re energize our sports and turn a new leaf of openness, accountability and private sector participation and leverage, as is the practice in other parts of the world.

After all, all the billions from Government are taxpayers’ money, and both the civil servants and the Senate Committee on Sports are all servants of the Nigerian people, dependent largely on the Nigerian State for their salaries and upkeep.”

Dan Ngerem, a former President of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, and who was a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Sports, has had a lot to say about the FIFA U 17 mess. His comments are the stuff of which seminar papers are made.

Maybe it is indeed time we took a closer look at the much mooted Private Sector participation. And who can give us better than a denizen of the Private Sector with sports on his mind, like this sports enthusiast? More later.
SportsBiz.

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