Nigerian Sports Sector is still in the 90s – Taye Hassan Adigun
Government administration industry needs to hands off from the sector
Felele247 Media Chief Executive Officer of Felele247.com Taye Hassan Adigun has advise states government in Nigeria to find a way to hands off from sports for the sector to be a revenue generating sector and job creating platform for Nigerian youths.
Taye who is also an ICT Expert in Hybrid web and mobile application explain that states government should hands off from sports, they should see the sector as a creative platform to discover talent and not as a philanthropic sector.
The sports industry is a multi billion dollar incoming generating platform in all area. An example is football (soccer) alot of people will work behind the scene, apart from professional footballers who execute the game on the pitch, there are other jobs lying down begging to be use.
All what they have to do is to build sporting facilities and submit a member that will represent their interest. They should allow privates consortiums to manage teams not only football, but all sports discipline. This will give way for private sponsorship
A former FIFA Domestic Transfer Matching System Manager with Niger Tornadoes FC of Minna give example of Cameroon domestic football league how is being revive under the leadership of former Indomitable Lions striker Samuel Eto’o Fils “In Cameroon, all their football clubs are being run privately. FECAFOOT under the leadership of Samuel Eto’o has successfully restructure their domestic league from Elite to their women league, both leagues have their own sponsorship”.
Nigeria Domestic League ( NPFL) is going through difficult times with some internal forces making it difficult for the league to get sponsorship.
Secondly, Almost all the clubs in the NPFL is state government owned. You cannot expect a private entity to come and dump money on a club which being run by political appointees. No accountability, No transparency.
Majority of the privately run clubs ply their trade in the second division they are competing with some state owned club which make it difficult for them to get into the elite league.
Nigeria’s most innovate club Vandrezzer FC is a victim, I will get into that later in my subsequence article.
States government needs to get their hand off from some of this club and give it out to sports consortium who can drive sponsorship and money into this clubs, by selling out of their stakes to this consortiums. The states government will still be part of the clubs, because the facility is their property.
We are far behind in sports in Africa, Nigeria is still in the 90s where we (Nigeria) can go to anywhere in Africa and pick maximum point, but things have change, other African countries have move on with the latest sports ideas and innovation, most especially in Women football, look at South Africa they are more advance than in women football development, here in Nigeria we talk and talk and talk, nothing to show in reality”
“Let’s say any of these wins the league title Plateau United, Kano Pillars, Lobi Stars and United, where is their women football team? Because the new CAF Club licence criteria stated that any team that qualify for continental competition must provide a women’s team
Our sports administators are there for their personal affluence, Amaju Pinnick Nigeria Football Federation is a typical example, he failed to put the super eagles first (Nigeria) first .
