Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung on Thursday said the entire sports sector needs an immediate “Surgery” to save the country from continuous embarrassment.
The minister was speaking against the backdrop of the unpaid allowances and bonuses due to to the Super Falcons after their win at the African Women Nation’s Cup. He blamed the Nigerian Football
Federation(NFF) for the delay.
Fielding questions from newsmen at the Presidential Villa Abuja and meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari and later spotted in a chat with minister of finance Kemi Adeosun, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo
and the minister of Budget and National Planning, Udoma Udoma, the sports minister said the government’s image will continue to be smeared by dust rising from such issues.
The victorious Super Falcons,which trashed Cameroon 1-0 to win the African Women Nation’s Cup trophy at the weekend, are said to have threatened to cease the trophy on account of their unpaid allowances.
In defence of the government’s inaction to pay, the information minister, Lai Mohammed had on Wednesday said it was due to the economic recession in the country.
However, Dalung said ”The situation is highly unfortunate and I don’t like it, these girls have given confidence to women who want to embrace sports, so this will go a long way in killing this laudable
achievement. It is unfortunate but we will make sure the right thing is done.
“And after the triumph, it was not managed properly, there are issues of pending salaries for the coaches. The coaches have not been paid for a long time, the coaches too have their grievances alongside, I think it is a complex situation but the entire governance of football deserves an urgent surgery.
“If that surgery is not done we will always live with the embarrassment. I am talking about the governance of football administration in Nigeria, government has to do the surgery because they have been at the receiving end of the embarrassment.
“We must be prepared to do this to save the future of football in Nigeria. We must come together to find solutions to see how this issues can be tackled. The non-interference has been used to harass and intimidate government,but now that the government is being embarrassed by these activities, I don’t see anybody talking about interference, they use it to scandalise the government”.
The sector needs a timely intervention, the minister said as he blamed the sports administration of their lacklustre attitude. According to him, if they had requested for the funds in time it would have been easier to get it from the coffers of government.
“The budgeting for sports is done by the administration, ours is intervention, just like when you have a fire disaster, if they had requested for funds in time, the process would have been easier and I think that was not done.
“So the man who is at the receiving end has the responsibility of ensuring that things must be done right, so we must take steps to ensure that money meant for athletes get to them on time as at when due” he said.
Making reference to what ensued during the Rio games, the minister said he will stop at nothing to bring the needed reforms to the sector.
“Football events are planned properly and executed according to plan. Let me tell you what happened in Rio, one of the things we did which was unpopular with many was to insist for the first time in the history of this country to pay athletes directly, to make sure athletes collect their money from government hand to hand against paying their federation to pay them because we have reports on what used to transpire, when you pay through secondary or third parties, that was not popular with so many federation but I insisted that it must be done.
“Second thing that was so unpopular in Rio was this idea of paying everybody the number of days that was approved by government, that was 22days. There were some athletes that crashed out five days into the competition but I insisted they must be paid their 22days.
“In the past it was not like that, you are paid based on the number of days. This two decisions was unpopular, these are the type of reforms we need to inject to bring sanity into the governance of the
administration of sports and I will stop at nothing to do it, if we don’t get it right now I don’t know when we will get it right” he said.
