Sports holds key to Nigeria’s future –Enoh

Minister of Sports Development, Senator John Enoh, talks about his experience since taking charge of the country's sports sector, financial challenges, grassroots development plans, state of sports facilities and more, in this interview with ‘TANA AIYEJINA

You clocked 100 days in office as Nigeria's sports minister last November. How would you describe your experience so far?

I think the experience has been worth the whole. I found the sector full of very enthusiastic and exciting people, a sector that's driven by a lot of passion and interest. I found a sector that holds the key to the future of this great country.

Wherever I've gone I've been greeted by young men and women with a thirst to showcase their abilities and talents. I found almost no difference playing my politics and running campaigns and this job. You go to some places and you get greeted by crowds and drumming and all of that.

That in itself is a function of how much life I've found, but I've also found a sector that appears to have moved ahead of government, a sector that is expectant and full of expectations, a sector that is waiting for the government and private sector to take it over and give it an opportunity to blow up and blossom.

So, after 100 days plus, in spite of the enormous problems and challenges that I've found, I've also begun to think that President Bola Tinubu remains a very strategic player both as a politician and President of Nigeria, knowing who and who to place where, given his own understanding, retrospectively, of the kind of people he has in his cabinet.

N31bn was allocated to the sports ministry for next year's budget, which has kept stakeholders wondering how the ministry would be able to execute its programmes, going by the high rate of inflation in the country…

(Cuts in) Well, I hope you are right with the allocated figure. I know that the ministry has about N20bn for capital (expenditure).

Yes, you are right somehow. Of course, let me say that there's about no sector that is ever able to attract adequate funding from the government, given my experience as a one-time Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Appropriation sitting over the national budget and my coming face to face with different sectoral expectations, the difference with even the global standards as to government having to devote some of its resources to fund this sector or that sector.

The government is never able to provide enough of that. But having said so, you are right, the situation with the sports sector is very dire, extremely dire, to the extent that in spite of the significant improvement in terms of that global figure in the 2024 budget estimate compared to what it has been in the past.

In spite of that, because of the dire need of the sector, that figure still reflects as though it's just a drop of water in the ocean. Increasingly, I'm coming face to face with the fact that the funding for sports vis-a-vis how much is required to jump-start this sector. Can it be accommodated with the regular Federal Government budget?

Or do I, as Sports Development Minister, find some way of having to look at extra-budgetary initiatives having to do with major intervention funding? Am I, going forward, going to begin to look at the funding that consists of a collaboration between the public and private sectors? I've had cause to speak here and there, that the future of the sports sector is in the hands of the private sector.

So, you're right, the amount allocated cannot, what the ministry at best can be able to do with this funding is to just look at a few basic things. We can't do those fundamental and those very big things that are expected of us. And what do I mean?

First, the state of even the existing infrastructure, the stadiums — the Moshood Abiola National Stadium, Abuja for example, the National Stadium in Surulere in Lagos, I was at the former Liberty Stadium in Ibadan, which was renamed the Obafemi Awolowo Stadium since 2010.

Taking those three alone, you need lots and lots of billions of naira to be able to manage them. But I think we are going to take what we have as a starting point to see what more we can do.

Our infrastructures that I find are in a sorry state. I went to Liberty Stadium and once I got ushered into the main bowl of that stadium, I didn't know where the playing pitch was. And the first question I asked was, ‘When last was a game of football played in this stadium?'

And I was told by the stadium manager that it was as far back as 1999. On top of all of these, we need to develop more, we don't even have adequate facilities or infrastructure. So, that's where we are.

You've always harped on private-sector collaboration in the sports sector. How far have you gone?

I'm not in a position now to make any particular claims or statements about the success rate of the collaborations and partnerships with the private sector.

All I can say, for example, if I made that claim at the very beginning, that claim is even much more so now. Don't forget the implementation of the National Sports Industry Policy in itself. It hinges and it's going to depend a lot on that partnership and collaboration with the private sector.

We just talked about the issue of the government's inability to provide enough funding; if the government can't provide the right funding, what it means is that there must be a funding model that doesn't allow the entire responsibility to be on the government alone.

If for example there's some kind of private partnership in Ibadan for the Liberty Stadium in Ibadan years ago, that infrastructure won't be the way it is, if we had with Lagos, it won't be the way it is. Twenty years after the Abuja stadium was built, deliberately I insisted that my office would be in that stadium and that's where I've been operating from and by the grace of God, that's where I'll continue to operate from.

But if 20 years after, unless something happens, like the kind of funding model we are talking about, then the Abuja stadium, I'm sorry to say, may actually go the way of either the Lagos stadium or Liberty stadium. So, we are going to see how, not just to facilitate, but how to accelerate this model of funding.

It goes through quite a lot, through the ICRC (Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission) and all of that. I met a concession process ongoing, in terms of the stadium in Lagos, it had a few initial delays but I think that the next weeks and months, we are going to continue with it.

An integrity report during the tenure of your predecessor suggests that the stands of the Lagos stadium are in poor conditions and might collapse anytime. Is there anything you are doing to avoid this?

My hope is that in the course of accelerating the concession programme, with Lagos in particular, we will get face-to-face with that challenge, if it's actually true. I've had cause to ask questions here and there and I haven't come to any confirmation of that.

But I think that those who have expressed various interests in the process have gone far and there does seem to be a preferred bidder. I think we are going to be able to come to terms with that but my expectation of the Lagos stadium at concession, in terms of what I expect the facility to become, I expect nothing less than a modern facility and all it takes and requires.

You were at the remodelled Maracana stadium in Ajegunle, Lagos during your early days in office. What are your plans for grassroots sports in the country?

Well, grassroots sports development is the way to go and I've said a few times, that between competition and development of the sports, we may have, for too long, been too concerned with competitions. That's because the average Nigerian wants the country's sportsmen and women to win medals and laurels. Why not? The podium appearances that this comes with are very alluring.

Imagine for example, what happened to the psyche of the average Nigerian when Victor Osimhen, after 24 years, won the African Footballer of The Year award. Asisat Oshoala also won the women's version for the sixth time. Wherever you are as a Nigerian, whether in the country or outside, you would be very proud and that's because the entire world watched that and know that both footballers are Nigerians.

If as far back as 1974, when you had the Rumble in The Jungle in DR Congo, when the late Mohammed Ali fought against George Foreman, the viewership was about one billion and the world's population then was just about four billion, how much more now. So, it just shows you the audience.

So, I don't blame Nigerians for always looking forward to competitions, but I think at some point we may also have overdone this, to the total neglect of the development of the various sports. Sports development starts with the grassroots, so, we need to step backwards a bit after several years.

Does this mean the ministry will ignore competitions…

(Cuts in) Not that we want to completely ignore competitions, no, we cannot, we are part of the global committee of sports nations. So, there will always be sub-regional, regional and international sporting events that we will continue to take part in.

But we now need to also give as much attention to grassroots sports. Having said so, that's the easy thing to say but in terms of the actual situation on the ground, the question is, ‘Do we have those facilities or not? Do we have the infrastructure or not?'

Those young men and women that we want to encourage, and we want to tell them that there is a future in sports, those young men and women that we want to identify what their talents are and see how we can work on them and be sure that once we have the talents and you work hard, you can be sure of glory at the very top level waiting for you.

So, we must equally match this with having to provide them with the facilities at the grassroots, where they are.

Those who have turned out as our best athletes in the country haven't been people who were picked from Ikoyi, Victoria Island or Maitama in Abuja. They came from the backwaters of various interior communities, like Ajegunle in Lagos.

So, in recognition of this, the focus of the ministry is to see what different ways that we can adopt to begin a revolution in terms of grassroots infrastructure and sports development.

We started with an initiative during the budget season that is still ongoing, the ministry, under my leadership and what we did was that the last couple of weeks, I've had to sign personal letters to all the National Assembly members — 360 in the House and 109 in the Senate, urging them and exposing them to the attractions in terms of having to attract sports infrastructure and facilities to their different federal constituencies and senatorial districts.

I've had to urge them because every year there's a certain sum of money devoted to zonal intervention concerning projects.

And I have had to make a strong case and I said look, ‘this in itself can become a win-win for both parties — they who represent the people, who have the people's mandate in a country of more than 220 million people and counting, where more than 65 per cent of the population are youths.

What it means is that every lawmaker that attracts one sporting facility to his constituency is serving the interest of those youths and there's always so much excitement that greets that. So, that makes it easier and possible for the government to get these facilities to the grassroots.

So, I've made that kind of strong case and I'm optimistic that quite a number of them will buy into that. So, there is increasing thinking of different ways to make sure that one leaves this sector much better than one met it.