MKO Abiola Stadium: How not to keep a legacy, monument for sports

The MKO Abiola Stadium, once regarded as the best sporting facility in Sub-Saharan Africa, is again in a state of disrepair. The relapse mirrors the general warp maintenance culture, and its attendant no-no in modern sports, ERNEST NZOR reports.

When the MKO Abiola Stadium, Abuja, which was constructed by the President Olusegun Obasanjo-led administration at the cost of $360 million, was opened for the 2003 Africa Games, followers of Nigerian sports heaved a sigh of relief that, at last, the country had built an arena capable of hosting even the biggest international sporting events.

Their joy was hinged on the fact that the Olympic-sized stadium would provide the country with a world-class alternative to the National Stadium in Lagos, which was then at the initial stages of rot and, therefore, no longer fit to host big games.
 
Inaugurated on April 8, 2003, by President Obasanjo, the arena was ranked among the top 50 most expensive stadiums in the world. Built by Julius Berger, the stadium has Package A and Package B, with Package A comprising an all-covered main bowl with a 60, 491 seating capacity. It has other facilities like a presidential suite and viewing area, 56 corporate suites, modern turnstiles, banks, media facilities, two electronic scoreboards, floodlights, and a helipad.   
 
Also among its appurtenances are a VIP car park, public parking lot, standard practice pitches, a velodrome, shops and kiosks, generators, emergency service units, closed circuit security cameras, and crowd control steel fencing.

 With a budget said to be over $1 million, Dangote funded the renovation of the arena, which was declared fit, once again, to stage international competitions.

One of the first events that it hosted after it was refurbished was the Qatar 2022 World Cup qualifier between Nigeria and Ghana early in 2022, which the country lost to the Black Stars. It also hosted games of the women’s national team, including the Paris 2024 Olympics qualifier between the Super Falcons and the BanyanaBanyana of South Africa before being left to rot once again.
 
Before the beginning of the 2023/24 football season, Africa’s football governing body, the Confederation of African Football (CAF), disqualified the stadium and all the other arenas in Nigeria, except the AkwaIbom Stadium, in Uyo, from hosting international competitions because it lacks the facilities for such games.
 
One of that decision’s first victims was El Kanemi Football Club of Maiduguri, which had earlier picked the arena as their home venue in the 2024/25 CAF Confederation Cup.
 
El Kanemi were thus forced to travel down to Ikenne, Ogun State, to play their group games in the competition. The result was that after traveling for over 24 hours to their new ground, they lost the qualifier to Benin Republic’s Dadje FC, which got to the venue even before the home team.
 
According to CAF, the Abuja National Stadium’s pitch is not fit for international games, while the dressing rooms and media tribune do not measure up to the standard expected of such an important facility.

Some stakeholders in Nigeria’s sports say that one of the major problems of the stadium is the poor security network, as thieves and other miscreants find it easy to get into the arena.

Recently, thieves invaded the stadium, carting away electrical cables and plunging the stadium into a total blackout.
According to reports, the criminals had unfettered access to the facility’s cable because the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) disconnected the stadium from the national grid following a backlog of unpaid debts to the power distribution company.
 
The stadium has suffered several acts of theft over the years, including the disappearance of 27 air conditioners, which were stolen by yet-to-be-known vandals a few years ago.
 
This neglect of the MKO Abiola Stadium highlights broader concerns in Nigeria’s sports infrastructure and raises questions about long-term maintenance and accountability.

As acknowledged by former Sports Minister, Dare, without a concrete plan to sustain and regularly maintain improvements, Nigeria’s stadiums are doomed to cycle back into disrepair.

The recurring disrepair at the Moshood Abiola Stadium reflects a wider issue in Nigeria, where sporadic investments fail to achieve lasting results due to inadequate maintenance and ineffective management practices. 
 
Even with contributions from donors like Dangote, the absence of a sustainable upkeep plan limits the impact of such investments. Lamenting the poor state of the MKO Abiola Stadium, former national team football captain, Segun Odegbami revealed that he admonished the ministry to adopt a feasible way of maintaining the stadium pitch, but his advice was not heeded.

“What is happening now is a consequence of not doing anything about the state of the playing surfaces, not installing the right grass fields, drainage systems, watering systems, and not training grounds men on modern technology of nursing real grass turfs. I pointed this out to the outgone Minister of Sport when the 10-year Masterplan Committee for Nigerian Football visited the stadium when the latest work on the ground was going on over a year ago.
 
“I challenged the contractors handling the project to ensure that the highest standards of construction were adhered to because grass field management had failed severally in the country and needed extra-special handling. They took my challenge very poorly, even as they assured the minister that they knew what they were doing and would deliver a world-class grass field.”

Former defunct JIB Rocks of Jos defender, Theodore Chukwuemeka, who lives in Abuja, said one of the problems of the MKO Abiola Stadium “is its location and the poor publicity it gets from those who are supposed to market it.” He said that because the stadium is far removed from the city centre, not many people are aware of events and the facilities in the arena.

“You can imagine that many people in Abuja, who relocated to the Federal Capital Territory because of the kidnappings in their states, do not know that the stadium has facilities they can use to relax with their families.

“Even when there is a big game involving Nigeria, the event is not marketed to attract fans to the stadium. That is why there are always empty seats at the stadium during big games.

“If people are not using the facilities, they will rot and decay. It is as simple as that. The stadium is not like the Lagos arena, which is close to the people and always attracts people that are looking for where to exercise, or relax.”

Chukwuemeka called on the National Sports Commission (NSC) to liaise with the Federal Ministry of Works to devise a means of maintaining the stadium’s facilities all year round.

The newly appointed NSC Chairman, Mallam Shehu Dikko, recently presented an ambitious strategy to modernise Nigeria’s stadium infrastructure.  He noted that President Tinubu’s administration plans to build at least one FIFA-compliant stadium in each of Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, decentralising sports infrastructure and enabling more Nigerians to access world-class facilities.
 
At the heart of this plan, he said, is a vision for a sustainable Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model that would leverage Nigeria’s sports venues to generate revenue, providing a means for self-sustaining maintenance.

Dikko said the Tinubu’s administration aims to address these problems with a long-term vision and modernise the nation’s approach to sports infrastructure.
Also speaking on the state of the Abuja National Stadium, the NSC’s acting Director of Facilities Management and Stadium Development Department, Dr Mohammed Rabiu, told The Guardian that the problem with the arena is the changing dynamics in stadium nature of facilities for modern sports.

He said: “Sport is dynamic. So is the infrastructure that provides accommodation for games. They keep changing. Football is the most popular sport and therefore the most regulated. FIFA comes with standards every day that change; it is the same thing with CAF and therefore you will find that what was the standard 10 years ago cannot be the standard today.
 
“The Abuja National Stadium is still a national monument; however, it is outdated. It has also suffered from a lack of funding, which has made maintenance very difficult.   
 
“When Dangote adopted the facility of the Moshood Abiola National Stadium, Abuja, the main bowl particularly and what he intended doing was to revive the pitch and the scoreboard. Which he did and he did that through a company. Now the issue we have is that the company did what it could. But when FIFA and CAF came, they complained that it was not good enough. So, up to this moment, we are trying everything we can to see that it is maintained.
 

“The stadium is not hosting international matches because our pitch still has some challenges; it’s difficult for players to play on them.  “Secondly, the dressing rooms, toilets, and media centres were not arranged to meet FIFA standards and they are not up to date.”

He begged the Federal Government to fund the renovation of the standard and get engineers to work with FIFA to correct the defects in the stadium.

“When the stadium was opened in 2003, the cost of maintenance by Julius Berger was N1.3 billion. But if you want to do the same maintenance today, you will need to triple that amount. And remember, each time you don’t do that maintenance, the amount needed to do it will almost double.
 
“Now, the stadium has been left for years without proper maintenance. We are only doing some repair approaches. That is, if the roof is torn off, we put it in the budget and repair the roof. When that glass is broken, we also put it in the budget and repair the glass. We have not done comprehensive maintenance for a long time,” he said.