MINISTER OF SPORTS NOW AN ANTI-SPORTS MINISTER

Minister of Sports, Mr Solomon Dalung, has once again, proved his critics right in seeing him as an unfit person to head our Sports Ministry at this stage of our development. From poor handling of the supremacy contest in the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) between its President, Amaju Pinnick and his challenger, Chris Giwa, to the utter neglect of our Olympic team in Rio 2016, Dalung has reportedly courted another controversy by advising President Muhammadu Buhari not to approve Nigeria’s participation in the football World Cup competition coming up in Russia in 2018. According reports, Dalung justified his advice on the premise that Nigeria was “too hungry” to participate in the games which it might not win.


This latest blunder from a man given the mantle to take our sports to a higher level leaves many astonished Nigerians wondering whether this man has come to build or destroy our sports. Does he really understand why we have a Sports Ministry? Does he know what sports, especially football, means to Nigerians? Is he the only Nigerian that does not know that it is only during major international football championships (of which the World Cup is the ultimate) that Nigerians forget their infamous ethno-religious, political and sectional divisions and act as one? Granted, Nigeria is in a crippling recession. But the situation in Buhari’s first time as a military leader in 1985 was even worse, as there was severe shortage of essential commodities in our markets, stores and supermarkets, yet we successfully sponsored the first batch of Golden Eaglets to win Nigerian’s first universal soccer trophy in China. Besides the psychological boost football offers to the vast generality of Nigerians, it is also a great international image booster; a leveller in that smaller nations that are big in sports (such as Kenya, Ethiopia and Jamaica in athletics) rub shoulders with giants like the USA, Russia and China. This takes them out of obscurity to international reckoning. Beyond these is the fact that sport (football in particular) has become great business, not only for the talented youth who earn stupendously along with their worldwide fame, but also for the nations that have developed their sports infrastructure. That is Nigeria’s aspiration, which is why we have a Sports Ministry. We are convinced that President Buhari, who is a lover of football, will not succumb to this misguided and unpatriotic advice from a Minister who, clearly, has no business holding the Sports portfolio. With Nigeria already established in a pole position to qualify from our Africa group, any attempt to pull us out of the Russia World Cup could trigger a major citizen revolt. We reject Dalung’s opinion and urge the Federal Government to give the Super Eagles its unalloyed support to qualify and participate in the World Cup competition in Russia in 2018.

source:vanguard newspaper