By Patrick Omorodion

We are now known as a nation that lacks maintenance culture. Almost all our edifices built at staggering sums, sometimes ten times the cost elsewhere, are left to rot, most times because those in charge want to be able to award contracts for its renovation.

I remember in the 1990s that Seven-Up Bottling Company was deep into the sponsorship of sports in our country, especially basketball. The management where embarrassed that the indoor hall of the National Stadium in Lagos which host games of the league they sponsor was in a sorry state.

They offered to help put the floor of the hall in good shape not only to save the image of their company but also help the game grow by allowing the players exhibit the best of their skills.

It was shocking at the time how the Sports ministry rejected the offer and wanted to repair it by itself. Of course that would allow the officials inflate the figure and pocket the difference in the bloated budget. That attitude eroded the confidence of Seven-Up Bottling Company and led to the eventual stoppage of the league sponsorship.

That was how most facilities at the edifice that was at a time, the best in the West African sub-region started deteriorating. The edifice, at inception attracted the name Sports City which became synonymous with Surulere, where it was situated. Today the place is a sorry sight, only good for the sale of beer and pepper soup for Nigerians rated as the happiest in the world. An irony the late Afro beat legend, Fela Anikulakpo-Kuti described as suffering and smiling.

When the country wanted to host the All Africa Games for the second time in 2003, another edifice was planned for Abuja, now the new federal capital. The best was recommended and built. The edifice was admired by all the African countries who came for the Games. But their fear then, was, can Nigerians maintain it? Their experience with the Lagos stadium was still fresh in their minds of course.

Today, that Abuja edifice is an eyesore and a national disgrace. It again shows that Nigerians know how to build gargantuan edifices which they never know how to maintain or deliberately allow to degenerate to give room to the boys to ‘chop’ through the award of contracts. This is a stadium which cost, experts in Europe said, could be used to build about four of its kind in their countries.

Last week I did a story on how weeds and dangerous reptiles like snakes and scorpions have taken over the place because the sports ministry have failed to cut the weeds and mow the grasses. Fumigation of the entire stadium that used to be a regular thing has ceased, making reptiles turn the place into their abode. Workers who fear for their lives, especially at the Package B side of the complex which houses the Indoor Halls for basketball, wrestling, weightlifting, volleyball, badminton, squash as well as the swimming pool, now avoid their offices.

Surprisingly too, the main bowl which houses the football pitch is now bushy and grey and unsuitable for football matches.

That is why it was shocking that those who manage the game of football could take the annual Charity Cup, the event that serves as a prelude to the opening of the season, to that stadium for the match between the league champions, Rangers of Enugu and the Confederation Cup champions, FC IfeanyiUbah.

The most embarrassing thing was the presence of the Youth and Sports Minister, Barrister Solomon Dalung as one of the dignitaries at the event. I wonder how he felt watching a game of football in that kind of environment. The stands where spectators sat to watch the match was said to be very dusty and dirty to show that no cleaner has touched them for months.

A department under him is responsible for the maintenance of that stadium and others scattered around the country. But if you ask, the Director in-charge will tell you he has not received any allocation to do the needful. Yet Dalung sits in his office claiming to be supervising sports in the country. What report does he then present to the President Buhari during the weekly Federal Executive Council?

Leaving out the minister from this for now, what was the thinking of those who took the match there? Were they intending to expose the sports minister who regularly accuses them of corruption and mismanagement of funds given them to run football as also being incompetent and corrupt too? Didn’t they consider that they were exposing not only the players to risk of snake bite or scorpion sting but the hapless football fans who thronged there to watch the game? That was an adventure too risky to take, whatever the purpose was.

If like Barr Dalung said late last year that the problem he was having administering sports was the zero budgeting he was faced with, then it is time to draw the attention of the APC-led federal government of President Buhari to do something about it to save our sports, the only hope for millions of the youths, most of whom are the bread winners of their families. Otherwise, those who abandoned criminality to do sports, may be forced to return to their old ways and the country would be the worst for it.

As I round up this piece, it is painful to note that the Africa Nations Cup began yesterday in Gabon and Nigeria, the most populous African country is not represented there. A competition Guinea-Bissau, a country with an estimated population of barely two million people, less than that of Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos state, qualified to play in? If this is not a national shame, I don’t know what else is. It most annoying when one remembers that it a consecutive absence for the so-called giant of Africa.

Ironically most of the people who run the game now are the same people who conspired with their masters in 2006 to force Alhaji Ibrahim Galadima out of the NFA because Nigeria could not qualify for that year’s World Cup which held in Germany.

The Africa Nations Cup is less in magnitude, importance and financial gains than the World Cup, yet those who made Nigeria miss the Nations Cup twice in a row now are beating their chest that they have revived the Super Eagles because they have won two matches in the 2018 World Cup qualifiers. Shame indeed.