By Patrick Omorodion

THE  XXI Commonwealth Games ended  in Gold Coast, Australia exactly three weeks ago and Team Nigeria finished in 9th position with 9 gold, 9 silver and 6 bronze, a total of 24 medals. Compared with their outing four years ago in Glasgow, Scotland, it was a drop by one step from 8th to 9th.

Dalung

Interestingly, the man who President Muhammadu Buhari appointed to oversee the sports sector, Solomon Dalung, known for his many gaffes than positivity of the sector, like the Agama lizard was quick to heap praises on himself, claiming that Nigeria did better in Gold Coast than in Glasgow. This is without facts anyway.

At a time some of us have resolved to siddon look and watch because everything so far written about this Plateau-born ‘hunter’ turned politician seemed to be ignored by the man who appointed him, our body, the Sports Writers Association of Nigeria, SWAN which we thought had been overwhelmed by the system too suddenly came alive and told Dalung that he lied.

In a strong statement by its secretary general, Wale Alabi, SWAN faulted the minister’s claim and reminded him that while Nigeria placed 8th in Glasgow four years ago with 11 gold, 11 silver and 14 bronze medals, totalling 36, Team Nigeria dropped to 9th position with a total of 24 medals.

Again while the 2014 feat was achieved with only seven sports, this year’s lower performance was achieved with 10 sports in which Dalung had claimed we had a better comparative advantage. This included gymnastics he knows we are not up to average. But do you blame him when the man that appointed him nor the National Assembly which have the oversight function of seeing that the sports sector is giving its due with the right appropriation of funds but also to see that funds are properly administered don’t know what to do or are less bothered about the sector.

Even if the President doesn’t know, why is the National Assembly not asking questions? After the statement from SWAN, one expected that the National Assembly should have invited the sports minister to explain why the country failed to measure up with the 2014 performance even with the report of a much better budget for the Games.

Worried by the poor performance, SWAN wrote, “Also, given the resources that were put into our participation at the Gold Coast Games, as well as the benefit of learning from the mistakes of the past, we should have done better than ever.”

It argued that “If not for the intervention of Nigeria’s foreign-based athletes who had better training opportunities and facilities, we might not have won any medal.’ I shudder to think that the National Assembly did not see or read this piece from the SWAN body.

Therefore the call by SWAN on the National Assembly to carry out its oversight function on the sports ministry could as well fall on deaf ears because these same legislators who are supposed to put the sports ministry in check lobby to be made part of the government delegation, causing the contingent to be bloated unnecessarily.

Rather than accept that he had failed the nation by ill-preparing the athletes for the Games, Dalung made excuses by claiming that Team Nigeria did better this year. He exposed himself as someone who is not abreast with the ministry he is supposed to be supervising. He did the same thing in 2016, not preparing the athletes for the Rio Olympic Games which he defended  by claiming, albeit ignorantly, that athletes don’t really need  too much training to win medals once they have the winning mentality.

The sports ministry is always hiding under the umbrella of no funds to deny athletes proper training before major competitions but it is a known fact that its officials always go to the National Assembly to defend their budget and the funds are appropriated  accordingly. Was that not why the minister was once summoned after some federations complained about not receiving any money to train their athletes?

When teams go out of their way to perform well, the minister quickly claims credit for it, attributing it to the so-called reforms he carried out to reposition the ministry. The same reforms that brought confusion into the election of sports federations that is still having ripple effects till today.

In all, if the National Assembly is living up to its duty as a body overseeing the function of the sports ministry or even if the President has been showing interest in the sector and gauging the pulse of the stakeholders, maybe Dalung would have been history today. Until Dalung is removed as sports minister, the fortunes of the sector will continue to dwindle.