By Patrick Omorodion

Last year I incurred the wrath of former minister of sports, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi over an opinion I wrote in my column, SportsGuard, in the Sunday Vanguard. What was the opinion? That the government should treat all sports equally rather than the preferential treatment given to football.

I was in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire with the national men’s basketball team who were attending the Afrobasket Championship, which was incidentally a qualifying competition for the 2014 Basketball World Cup in Spain.

As an insider, I saw how the basketball players sacrificed for the country, earning next to nothing as allowances, winning bonus was out of it as it was not in the lean budget approved for the almost three weeks event.

In the process, two of the US-based players, Andy Ogide and Richard Oruche suffered severe injuries that kept them out of the competition and walking on crutches for the remaining part of their stay in Abidjan. Despite the lean purse of the Nigeria Basketball Federation, NBBF, the players were insured, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken place in the championship in the first place.

Despite the fact that I became a member of the NBBF Board by the magnanimity of the former minister, I could not fathom why he wanted me to see nothing and write nothing. Of course I was not trained that way and continued airing my opinion even on television whenever the opportunity beckoned.

I believe those managing our sports never want the president to know the fact that only football is supported by government otherwise why would a minister pick offence on my plea to the federal government to treat all sports men and women equally since they are all Nigerians first and foremost?

Only football players get rewarded by government even if they fail to win the ultimate prize. No one begrudged the government when it rewarded the Super Eagles after they won the 2013 Africa Nations Cup in South Africa. But what was the reason behind the reception and financial reward accorded the CHAN Eagles after they crashed out of the competition this year and returned with a consolatory bronze medal?

Other sports like wrestling and athletics also produced some medal winners recently. Some wrestlers got gold medal s in a recent Commonwealth Championships, but as I write this, government didn’t even know they represented the country in any competition how much more winning any medal. How would the government, in this case, the president know if not through his minister of sports?

It is either these ministers are overwhelmed by the amount of money which goes through them to the NFF to run football and  want a slice of it or they see football as the only way to pacify the angry citizens who are weighed down by the harsh economy occasioned by bad government policies.

This is not to say that Mallam Abdullahi did not try his best to see that each sport got its fair share of the lean budget government gives to sports but his reaction to my plea for equal attention to all sports just suggested that he wanted to behave like all others before him, that is treat football like an egg.

Is the trend continuing with Dr. Tamuno Danagogo who just replaced Mallam Abdullahi? Dr Danagogo’s appearance at the Indoor Hall of the Abuja National Stadium last week where he declared the First  Phase of the 10th edition of the Zenith Bank Women’s Basketball League open did not give much hope as his speech sounded like a broken record played by his predecessors.

He repeated the now familiar phrase of not going to be a football minister. Before that event at the Abuja National Stadium, barely 24 hours after his appointment, one of his kinsmen, Prince Opukiri Jones Ere, a former sports commissioner in Bayelsa state vouched for him that he will be fair to all sports. It is too early in the morning to be too sure on this.

The answer was not too long in coming as the new minister joined in the party that went to Costa Rica to cheer the national women’s U-17 team playing in the FIFA U-17 World Cup there. It didn’t matter that it was just an U-17 competition and the girls (or are they women?) were yet to qualify for the final where they would have needed every support to win the cup.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian senior men’s and women’s wrestling team preparing for an African Championship in Tunisia, incidentally a qualifying tournament for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland were battling for funds to travel and there was no answer to their quest which caused the dropping of some of the coaches expected to inspire them to win medals and Games ticket.

The worse of it was that the wrestlers were treated like orphans or nobodies as their camp allowance was slashed to half of what footballers get while in camp, even when it is clear they won’t earn any bonus for winning at any stage on the way to a medal.

Expectedly the wrestlers almost boycotted the trip and threatened to put up a show like the Eagles did in Namibia on their way to Brazil for the FIFA Confederations Cup last year. They had to be appealed to by a Board member who promised them that their matter would be taken to the minister.

As the wrestlers departed for Tunisia via Lagos last Thursday, they grumbled and wondered why they are treated unfairly. One of them even said, “How can the minister take a junior championship more seriously than ours because it is football?”

The anger against government’s preferential treatment for football and footballers is spreading and the earlier it is nipped in the bud, the better. The minister could start to right the wrong by jetting out to Tunisia to cheer the wrestlers and even promising a reward, like is done for footballers, to them if they win medals and tickets to the Commonwealth Games later in the year.