By Patrick Omorodion

The federal government through the ministry of youth and sports development is becoming a dog in a manger. Sitting tight on a property it has failed to develop and not ready to use in the nearest future.

The painful aspect of the attitude is that the property in question, the Afuze Games Village situated in Owan East local government area of Edo state wasn’t built by the federal government. Incidentally Afuze is the headquarters of the local government.

The property was built as far back as 1973 by the military administration of the Midwest state, then headed by Samuel Ogbemudia who was then   Lt. Colonel in the Nigeria Army.

The Edo state government has been making efforts as far back as 2008 to reclaim the property since it was lying waste as the ministry of sports was not interested in renovating it and putting it to proper use.

The last effort was made under the tenure of Barrister Godwin Dudu-orumen who knew what the facility meant to Midwest and later Bendel state athletes back in the day.

When Dudu-orumen was appointed the first executive chairman of Edo State Sports Commission, he briefed his principal, the Edo state governor, Mr Godwin Obaseki about the facility and the need to reclaim it for use by Edo state athletes who were now playing second fiddle to their counterparts from their sister state of Delta, with whom they dominated sports in Nigeria as Midwest and Bendel.

Dudu, as he is fondly called, never succeeded, not because he wasn’t pushing hard enough, but because the state government which earlier supported the move to reclaim the facility was either no longer interested or the sports ministry was playing a dog in the manger, not willing to let go.

However, a group of Edo sports people, including sports journalists and administrators as well as enthusiasts have taken it upon themselves to push for the reclaiming of a legacy left behind by their visionary leader, Dr Ogbemudia, who a couple of months before he died, told yours sincerely that he wept anytime he remembererd how the Afuze Games Village has been allowed to rot.

A member of the Edo group and former national cyclist who benefited from the use of the facility, Dr. Emmanuel Igbinosa wrote this on the group’s platform.

“He (Ogbemudia) established it (Games Village) as a training camp for Bendel State in 1973. The successes recorded in sports by the State was attributed to the training Camp in Afuze.

The Federal Government took it over so that it can be developed into an Olympic Training Camp for Nigerian Athletes. But it was left to decay.”. So sad.

Ogbemudia himself lamented in an interview that “I built the Afuze Games village when I was military governor and that helped us in then Midwest and Bendel but today the football pitch has been turned to a cassava farm.”

Before he passed on in 2017 at the age of 84, Dr. Ogbemudia threw a challenge to President Muhammadu Buhari saying, “Recently, President Buhari said “change begins with me”. So the need for change is of paramount importance. We must start our preparation now (that was the 2020 Tokyo Olympics which was later shifted to 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic which ravaged the entire world then.”

That was after the woeful outing of Team Nigeria at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, Brazil where Nigeria returned with only a bronze medal the football team won under Coach Samson Siasia whose team was ironically abandoned by the sports ministry headed by then controversial Plateau-born lawyer, Solomon Dalung.

Ogbemudia died before the next Olympics was hosted in Tokyo, Japan but Buhari never took up the challenge as the sports sector is still floundering with only occasional flashes through personal efforts of the athletes.

This and more importantly, the dwindling fortunes of Edo state in sports which it once dominated, is the reason for the agitation for the reclaiming of the Afuze Games Village from the federal government.

In the forefront of this agitation is a sportscaster, Godwin Enakhena who created the forum Edo Sports Family in 2018 and it boasts of 67 members as at today.

Apart from Enakhena, Dr. Igbinosa and this writer, other notable members of the group are Ade Ojeikhere, Editor of Sporting Life newspaper, Tana Aiyejina, Sports Editor of the Punch, Duro Ikhazuagbe, Sports Editor of ThisDay newspaper and Smarts Ebhodaghe, a sports marketing consultant.

Others include, Dr. Terry Eguaje, a renowned coaching instructor, Ben Ijewere, Larry Izamoje, CEO of Sports radio, 88.9 Brila FM, Ehi Braimah, a sports marketer of note, Dr. Robinson Okosun, Sports Psychologist attached to the Nigeria Football Federation and Dr Patrick Uwagbale, a retired director with the sports ministry.

Renowned football coach of note in the struggle to reclaim the Afuze Games Village is  Godwin Izilein and his boxing counterpart who trained a lot of boxers for Bendel, Issac Ikhuoria. Aisha Falode who heads the Women’s top division league as well as Sam John, who made the sports pages of Daily Times back in the day a  reader’s delight. 

So that the Edo state government will know the Edo Sports Family mean business, the permanent secretary of the Edo Sports Commission, Mrs. Sabina Chikere and Musa Ebhomian who will synergise with Mrs. Chikere to inform the sports master general of Edo state, Comrade Phillip Shaibu, the state’s Deputy Governor are on board too.

With confirmation from Dr. Igbinosa that the takeover plan and talks with the sports ministry about the Afuze Games Village takeover has not been rested, Enakena heaved a sigh of relief with this thoughts, “So it’s our property and we should do all within our power to take it back, especially at a time the FG is letting go a lot of facilities including National Stadiums across Nigeria”.

If the citizens are burning with this passion to reclaim Dr. Ogbemudia’s legacy, it is left for the Deputy Governor to prove that his passion to return Bendel Insurance Football Club, which have not lost a game so far in the ongoing abridged version of the Nigeria Professional Football League, NPFL is not a smokescreen, he has to walk the talk and be in the forefront of the ‘Reclaim Ogbemudia’s Legacy’ battle today.