The return of the National Sports Commission (NSC) was heralded as a silver bullet to cure the country’s sports woes. But one year later, stakeholders are unconvinced that the NSC is the solution, CHRISTIAN OKPARA reports.

With sports’ ability to turn children from poor homes into multi-millionaires, leveraging on their natural talents, it is viewed as one of the biggest employers of labour in the world.

In many developed countries, sports have a dedicated position in the body politic, with structures carefully built to enhance the development of the sector.

In the United States, where sports rank among the most important professions, for instance, the sector is carefully regulated by government agencies and privately run organisations that ensure its development and accessibility to everyone, regardless of their location.

The USOC, the apex sport governing body, has affiliate organisations, such as the NCAA, which regulates collegiate sports, and the National Governing Bodies (NGBs), which govern each Olympic sport within the United States. NGBs are responsible for training, competition, development, and nominating athletes to U.S. Olympic and Paralympic teams.

The United Kingdom, on the other hand, has the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS), which oversees sports policy and funding, aiming to increase participation, enhance the performance of elite athletes, and maintain the integrity of sport.

These organs continually strive to make their countries competitive in international sports, while fostering the right environment for young athletes to hone their skills and become elite athletes within standard gestation periods.

Both the United States and the United Kingdom have refined their systems to consistently rank among the top 10 countries in major global sports events.

Nigeria, which also aspires to excel in the global arena like the United States and the United Kingdom, has experimented with several governing structures, including the National Sports Council of the early years, the Ministry of Sports, and the National Sports Commission (NSC).

Recently, the country returned to the NSC model after experimenting with the ministry system, which many claimed did not provide the country with enough room to reap the benefits of the experience and knowledge of its sports technocrats.

The NSC, which in the past was a parastatal supervised by the Ministry of Sports, achieved great success for over two decades, when it saddled sports professionals and technocrats with the responsibility of developing elite athletes in the country.

These elite athletes are those gifted boys and girls discovered and assembled from the grassroots, with primary and secondary schools as their major anchor.

Experts say that the high turnover of ministers and the shuffling of sport management between a set-up of the Ministry of Sports with the NSC as a parastatal, the ministry subsuming the NSC, the NSC existing without a supervisory sports ministry, or the collapse of the two under the Ministry, an unfortunate musical game of chairs that started around 1991, had become the Albatross of sports growth and development in the country.

When the federal government decided to revert to the sports commission model last year, the new NSC was expected to collaborate with the National Olympic Committee (NOC) and various sports federations to develop a pool of outstanding athletes to effectively represent the country at major championships.

Its reinstatement was touted to bring significant changes to Nigeria’s sports management and development. But one year down the line, some stakeholders are beginning to wonder if the system is the problem or the choice of personnel.

The NSC was expected to, among other things, address the problem of facilities that have rendered the country barely able to host major international championships. And to stoke the expectations of long-suffering sports stakeholders, the new NSC leadership, upon assuming office, assured Nigerians that it was primed to do things differently and return the country to the league of top sporting nations in the world.

The NSC Chairman, Shehu Dikko, told Nigerians that President Bola Tinubu had given him the mandate to change the “ecosystem of our sports by moving from consumption to production. We want to create a proper sporting economy. We have reset our thinking and focus on development, refocused our strategy, decided to jumpstart our sports, and we have to re-launch by doing things the right way.”

Dikko said that the new commission would implement programmes to arrest the decline in the country’s sports and establish a system that ensures no talented young Nigerian is left unscouted and untrained to become a world-class competitor.

According to Dikko, sports are now classified as a national asset, which will necessitate the enactment of special legislation and the establishment of specialised regulatory frameworks.

With the N78 billion budget allocation to develop critical sports infrastructure and other programmes, stakeholders believed that the NSC would tackle the facilities’ deficit that has denied athletes the chance to train effectively in the country.

One of the strategies the Dikko-led NSC said it had created to change the narrative in Nigerian sports was the creation of the Elite Athletes Development and Podium Board (EADPB), which is expected to cater to elite athletes to ensure that they are always ready to compete at the same level as their counterparts from other countries.

The EADPD was expected to identify potential podium athletes, place them on grants and ensure that they get all they need to be at their peak at all times.

However, stakeholders are divided on the effectiveness of the commission’s designs in tackling the myriad of problems affecting the country’s sports development.

While some regret that the Commission has not done enough in one year to justify the stakeholders’ belief that Nigeria’s sports are best served by the NSC model, others argue that one year is insufficient time to judge the Commission due to the many years of mismanagement it inherited.

But a former African tennis champion, Dr Sadiq Abdullahi, said that the NSC has done fairly well given the prevailing situation.

Abdullahi said, “Although there are certain things one should expect to be in place after one year, it is still too early to judge the commission.”

He averred that the NSC is still hampered by the failure of the government to constitute the commission’s governing board according to the NSC Act of 2023.

Abdullahi said: “The NSC Act of 2023 had the roles and functions of the new NSC, including provisions for commissioners for each of the six geopolitical zones.

Some of the effects of not constituting the Commissioners are, first, it puts too much power and authority (the concentration and centralisation of power) in the hands of the chairman and director-general, thereby running sports development from Abuja rather from the six zonal offices. Second, limited funds and resources will not be readily available to other parts of Nigeria, slowing down sports development. Third, policy implementation will be difficult (the drivers of the National Sports Industry Policy will be the six zonal Commissioners, Chairmen/Directors of State Sports Commissions/Councils and the presidents of State Sports Associations), and finally, athletes, especially junior athletes and their coaches, will be greatly impacted by the untimely release of funds for programmes and activities.

“Furthermore, Abuja politics may undermine the applicability, implementation and enforcement of national sports development policies, which in most cases are not athlete-centric.”  

Abdullahi said that things have not gone as stakeholders expected because the “old structure inherited by the NSC has not given way to a new structure, pointing at the situation where the old ministry staff are still in charge of critical areas in the commission, to buttress his point.
  
He advised the NSC to endeavour to release a National Sports Development Strategy 2026-2036, adding: “To get back on track, the Dikko administration should enact some of the provisions of the NSC Act of 2023, and also implement some of the provisions of the 2022-2026 National Sports Industry Policy.”

Another stakeholder, who pleaded anonymity, was blunt in describing the NSC as a big disappointment, “going by the expectations of the public and the promises made by the leadership on assumption of office.”
  
He said: “The NSC promised to put structures in place to develop sports from the grassroots, but what we see is a body fixated with organising and attending competitions when the country lacks critical infrastructure.
  
“The other day, we saw a viral video where one of the members of the Elite Athletes Board was complaining that since the body was inaugurated, nobody has invited them to a meeting or sought their views on what is supposed to be their mandate. It is like these people live by pronouncements without action.”

A former JIB Rocks of Jos defender, Theodore Chukwuemeka, says that the NSC is doing its best to lift Nigerian sports, adding, however, that “there seems to be no clear leadership structure, which has created the impression that there is a power tussle between the chairman, Shehu Dikko and Director General, Bukola Olapade.

“I am saying this because they seem to be talking at the same time on the same issues. We see different press statements signed by the assistants of these people, and one begins to wonder if there is no order in the commission.”

While congratulating the NSC on its first anniversary, a former chairman of the Lagos State Sports Commission, Kweku Tandoh, said that it has been a good year for the commission despite some stakeholders’ argument that it has not done anything to warrant celebrations.

He said: “I think the first thing that we need to celebrate is the fact that sport now has an autonomous body that is in charge of it. It’s a call that we’ve been clamouring for a long while, and I’m happy President Bola Tinubu justifiably created the National Sports Commission.

“The last year, for me, is a starting point. We cannot get to the end of it all in just one year, but I think the building blocks are beginning to come into place.

“First of all, of course, the recognition that sports are a body that needs its own autonomous agency to run it is a good thing. Secondly, the people who have been put in charge, Shehu Dikko and Bukola Olopade, in my opinion, have in the last year begun to reposition the commission as a serious brand.

“A lot of people may not know about this because they cannot actually see it yet, but I can tell you that in the corporate world, the commission has become a relevant agency; an agency that can be considered to work with.

When we realise that sport is a business and we realise that government alone cannot fund sports, then the importance of placing the National Sports Commission on a sound pedestal with the corporate sector is vital. And I think that is something that Shehu Dikko and Bukola Olopade have begun to do in the last year. The optics are a bit better now. The National Sports Commission has better optics with the corporate sector.”

Tandoh said his interactions with corporate sector players have shown that the way people view sports has changed in the last year due to the underground work that the NSC has been doing to raise its profile and shed the baggage that has been associated with sports during its time in the ministry.

“It takes a while to get people to discard the prejudices they had when they were in their ministry. And I think they’ve done a lot of work in that regard. And going forward, we shall begin to see the benefits of that favourable disposition of the corporate sector to sports under the NSC.”

On the poor state of the country’s sports facilities, Tandoh said: “It’s not in one year that we’re going to fix the infrastructure that has been in decay over the years in sports.
It takes a lot.

“The federal government will not fund the remodelling, refurbishing or repairs of those facilities 100 per cent because it is not sustainable, and I believe that the NSC is looking for more viable and sustainable options in terms of funding infrastructure development.”