ON May 29, 2026, it will be exactly three years since Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu was sworn in as the fifth democratically elected president of Nigeria. For those three years, one cannot point to his blueprint aimed at putting the country’s sports among the top twenty in the world as former president, late Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’Adua had visioned two years after his election in 2009.

Even as governor of Lagos State from 1999 to 2003, Tinubu didn’t do much for the sports sector in Lagos as the period turned out to be one when athletes in the state sought greener pastures in other states which needed them mostly for the National Sports festival, the only national competition through which they could qualify to represent Nigeria at both continental and world levels.

While presenting the first year scored card of the Tinubu regime, his appointee to oversee the sports sector, Senator John Ewan Enoh in a 4-page document titled ‘The Progress So Far’, said that “For the first time in the nation, a Federal Ministry of Sports Development was established to explore the potential in the sports sector, potentials which will impact significantly on the nation’s growth along the lines of creating employment opportunities, curbing insecurity and contributing to the nation’s GDP.”

Senator Enoh disclosed that after identifying the problems and opportunities in the sports sector, he interacted with stakeholders, he began implementing policies to bring about enduring systemic change.

Ironically, his first major assignment with Team Nigeria at the Paris 2024 Olympics, athletes complained of lack of proper welfare for them which caused some of them to protest non-registration for their events as well as inadequate and poor kitting, leading to athletes carrying placards to air their grievances.

And this came at a time the government approved and disbursed N12 billion for the athletes to have good training in Germany and Spain and return with medals instead of scandals.

The scandals forced Senator Enoh to set up an investigative panel headed by a respected senior sports journalists, Dr. Mumini Alao who returned a verdict of guilty on some officials of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN.

The embarrassment caused by the athletes’ protest may have caused President Tinubu to transfer the sports minister, while dissolving the sports ministry and resuscitating the National Sports Commission, NSC, which has died and risen a couple of times in the past.

Athletes and officials who have always complained of government bureaucracy in the sports ministry which has always been a cog in the progress of sports development and athletes’ performance were ecstatic with the revival of the NSC which they believed would be managed by sports technocrats.

The NSC was actually created to function as Nigeria’s apex regulatory body for sports, established to remove bureaucratic encumbrances, separate sports administration from politics, and enthrone professionalism in the sector.