This is the last part of last week’s  interview with sports buff, ex-international and a 1980 Nations Cup winner, Chief Adokiye Amiesimaka,  JOHN EGBOKHAN presents his view in this two-part conversation, revolving round Nigerian sports.

Still on the NOC

I don’t understand what is wrong with us. NOC   is the body that is supposed to be running sports but unfortunately, the NSC that does not exist by law is the one that the federations owe their allegiance. It is the NOC that should be calling the shots. As we are talking now, the lot of the power is with the NSC that does not exist. It only exists in name. The NSC bill is in the National Assembly and is taking too long.

Adokiye

The problem is that we don’t have an NSC Act, but the way things are being run now it is the NSC that should come up with an Act that will have as one of its provisions, a portion allowing the setting up of the Court of Arbitration for Sports, to give it the powers that it needs because if you look at the old NSC Act, the one that does not exist by law, you will find out that you have something similar to an arbitration body but then it is not in line with what IOC wants.. So there is just too much confusion became of selfish interest.

That is the bottom-line. Selfish interest of those in charge of responsibilities. That is the key problem with Nigeria. It’s not that they do not know what to do but because members of the public allow them the freedom, selfish interests hold sway.

This selfish interest cuts across all sports bodies…

Yes, it cuts across the sports bodies. The sports bodies are run by the sports minister. Our sports ministers are always sounding helpless, giving the impression that there is little that they can do, but they can do anything. The Sports Minister can do anything.

If they are ready to get the job done, they can do it. I have made the point that if the federal government makes the mistake of appointing me sports ministry if they did that mistake, the first thing I would do is to scrap the sport ministry because we don’t need it.

We need a sports commission that will put our sports on the right track. But as long as they have sports ministers, who are happy to be called ministers because of the attention they will get, we will allow our sports to be run by government, then we will continue to under-achieve.

As long as we have a sports ministry, with a sports minister, because of what he will be getting from office, and then our sports generally is run by government, through the sports ministry, we will continue to under-achieve. What we need is not a sport ministry but a sports commission, which is a special sports governing body. That is what we need is this country.

Have we managed our Afcon success well?

We’ve not. I wrote a paper on managing our proudest Afcon achievement, which was in four-series and ran over a period of one month. If you go through that piece, you will see that we are not managing our success well. Starting with the way this so-called NFF have gone about ruining Super Eagles.

And have we arrived?

(Laugh) Look, those who are there don’t even have a clue. There is an express road before them but they are not seeing it. They have shut their eyes to it. The road is to their right but they are looking left. We’ve not even seen the road not to talk of arriving there. As they say, “na today”.

And how does this affect our chances to qualify for the 2014 World Cup?

We may qualify for the World Cup because Keshi won the Nations Cup despite the NFF’s attempt to run the party for him. Paul Okoku was right on the vendetta bid.  But the problem we are having here as I see it is that, let me make an analogy.

If you have a child in the university and that child is a first-class material but the child continues to perform in such a way that at the end of the day he make a 2-2, second class lower, would you say that the child has succeeded? No, because the child is a first class candidate but gets a 2-2, so he has under-achieved. That is the situation with Nigeria.

We have the potential to be among the best and we keep on struggling, we keep on lagging behind. We are playing Kenya in June to beat them. In the late 1970s, we used to flog Republic of Benin 7-0. In fact, my first match with the Green Eagles saw us beating Benin 7-0., Burkina Faso 7-1 in Finidi’s time. So are you sure that we’ve been able to beat those teams with more than a lone goal now? You know how difficult it is for us to even win a match now, no matter how small the team are, even Sudan, we are not sure we can beat them.

That is the situation we have found ourselves in. We have under-achieved. It is not just that others are coming up but we are going down. And that is because we have people who have been put in positions of responsibilities, who don’t have a clue on how to fix the problem, they are only there to satisfy their interests and members of the public are allowing them to do so with impunity, that is the problem.

Going back to my days in the Eagles, shortly after we won the Nations Cup in1980, the attention had dwindled. We did a tour of the Southern part of Africa, Kenya, Tanazia, Zimbabwe and I had an harmstring injury and it was a good opportunity for the NFF to get rid of this guy.

Instead of attending to the injury, they just didn’t care anymore and of course, the next thing was that I got an invitation and I turned it down. That was why I stopped playing for Nigeria. And even before then, there were interviews that they granted to the press, where they said that we had made so much money, we were now millionaires, that they didn’t think that we wanted to play football again and they should now start looking for new blood to inject into the team. It is not now that this thing started with the Eagles, it’s been like that.

And it turned out that we could not go beyond the first round of the next tournament in 1982…

Yes, you look at the record. After the Nations Cup in 1982, it took us 14 years to win the Nations Cup again and after that, it look us another 19 years. It’s so said that we are going down that same path. When teams win, those who are supposed to run the game, whose primary interest is the development of the game, turn away from their primary interest to satisfy themselves. When they see coaches and players making money, they are not happy, so any opportunity that they see to get the coach out of the team, they quickly seize it but the federation got too much money from this competition.

Sir, a final question on Patrick Ekeji, your teammate, he has retired from NSC, what are his legacies?

Oh! dear, it’s a very difficult situation. Ekeji was my best friend in the national team. We were room-mates. In fact, our families are very close. His wife and my wife are best of friends. That’s how close we are. And I thank God that I always told him privately and publicly that he was doing wrong.

I thank God that I told him that “Ekeji, you have a place to reform sports, that you are an ex-international, you know what to do, go ahead and do it.” But he always told me that the people he was working with were a problem and I told him that’s not the point, that you are in charge, you must make a mark. I told that he can’t afford to run the game the way the people who were there before him, ran it.

You played the game and should show that you are in class of your own. Unfortunately, Ekeji failed. It’s unfortunate because he had the opportunity to write his name in gold but he failed.

Tell us the reasons why you say he failed…

As far as I am concerned, he failed because our sports is still the way it is before Ekeji took charge as Director General of the NSC. We should see a marked improvement in the sports industry. Instead of an improvement, we see a decline and confusion. He failed, plain and simple. He failed to develop sports. Look at the various sports federations, see the way they are set up, see the way they are run, see the way they are funded, all the federations, including the NFA, see the way they are funded, set up and run.

Look at the sports environment generally, can you talk about an improvement in sports administration generally? Leave professional sports, talk about sports for the masses, sports for the generality, amateur sports, can you talk about greater awareness in sports by the masses? Can you talk about greater participation in sports by the masses? You can’t. Look at the sports facilities around, look at the national stadium, Abuja, look at other sports facilities, look at their state of disrepair?

The government says it wants to concession some of our national stadia…

Iwoyi laro, as Yoruba people would say. Are you Yoruba?

No, I’m from Edo State sir,

Iwoyi laro, oh they are just realizing that now? So are they just realizing that now? Let’s not fool ourselves. On Ekeji, I extend congratulations to him for seeing through service and retiring but I am disappointed that he had an opportunity, a golden opportunity to make a mark for himself but he failed to do so because he was too conscious of the interest of those around him.

He was not sufficiently concerned about the interest of sports in Nigeria. He was more concerned about the interests of those around him, which is a very unfortunate thing.