BY KUNLE SOLAJA.

The Nigerian sports community is welcoming Sunday Dare as the country’s  35^th  sports minister since the era of the first occupier of that position, Chief Joseph Modupe Johnson (JMJ) in 1960.

This is the post that the ever-lively Chief Alex Akinyele once described as the Games Master General of the Federation.

But as was the case with most of the 34 helmsmen before him, there is little or nothing to connect him to sports. He will have to learn the principle of sports administration and organisation while on the saddle.

As earlier remarked, he is not alone. In the past, possibly only five or six of the 34 sports ministers/National Sports Commission chairmen have claims to sports background.

Anthony Ikazoboh led the pack as a former player of the then famed Stationery Stores in the 1960s. Others with claims to sports before assumption to offices as either NSC chairman or sports minister were Silvanus Akinwunmi, Jim Nwobodo, Stephen Akiga,  Sani Ndanusa and Taoheed Adedoja.

Of the previous 34 helmsmen before Dare, only the late Sampson Emeka Omeruah ever got a second chance.  The new sheriff at the sports ministry therefore has to hit the ground running. 

He is coming in on the yet to be officially accepted 86^th anniversary of the oldest sports federation in the country, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).

His coming is also coming during the African Games holding in Morocco. That will undoubtedly be his first attention.

Being a ‘stranger’ in the sports community or just learning the curves may not necessarily be a disadvantage if Dare applies the best principles of administration.

After all, the celebrated American football player and coach, Vince Lombardy in his famous quote: “The Habit of Winning “remarked that ‘running a football team is not different than running an army, a political party or a business.

“The principles are the same”. The object is to win – to beat the other guy. That Dare is a stranger in the sports community may therefore not be a hindrance if he employs Solomonic wisdom. After all, the Biblical Joseph made great impact in a foreign land despite not having been schooled in the principles of administration.

For the records, Dare becomes the 14^th sports minister since the advent of the present democratic dispensation 20 years ago.

The import is that the sports ministry is the most unstable and therefore has the highest turnover of ministers. On the average, a minister spends just a little over one year in office before he is shown the exit.

Only Solomon Dalung, the immediate past sports minister served a full term. This is the first lesson Dare has to have at the back of his mind.

Time is too short to begin any experimental exercise. Like most before him, it is very likely he too is planning a visit to the National Stadium in Lagos.

The new minister should just save himself the rituals, which almost all his predecessors had done since 2003 when the previous national edifice of pride went into ruins.

It became a sort of ‘tourist’ attraction to every new sports minister. Dare should just ask for the files and go through all the observations of his predecessors and attempt a revival of our national pride.

That was the arena that had hosted two final matches of Africa’s premier football competitions in 1980 and 2000. That was an arena that hosted the All Africa Games in 1973 and the 1999 FIFA World Youth Championship (now tagged U-20 World Cup).

That was an arena that had witnessed more renovation that any other sporting facility in the country having been upgraded for the 1980 African Nations Cup, two botched World Youth Championships in 1991 and 1995 and finally 1999.

It is a great irony that the coming of democratic rules in the country suddenly brought ruins to such a massive edifice that is situated right in the heart of a mega city. Dare should look at the various reports his predecessors had written after pilgrimages to what was dubbed ‘Sport City’ when the arena was very functional in the 1970s and 1980s.

  Europe and other parts of the world boast of time-honoured sports arenas that are constantly being upgraded and maintained to meet current demands. Our own National Stadium has turned a haven for hoodlums. The arena and the Obafemi Awolowo Stadium, Ibadan are in need of massive facelift.

A former sports minister, Taoheed Adedoja, once spoke of plans of turning the National Institute of Sports (NIS) hostel to a 130-room four-star sports hotel.  

Adedoja, a professor of sports administration, also spoke of plans for the 50-room Games Village in Surulere Lagos and the 55-room hostel complex at the Obafemi Awolowo Stadium, Ibadan as well as a similar 40-room facility of the Ahmadu Bello Stadium in Kaduna attaining the status of three star hotels. The hotels were to be named after outstanding athletes.    

All those plans were in the ‘pipelines’ that have since been vandalised. According to Adedoja, each of the hotels was expected to generate half a million-naira daily and would be run by professionals in the hospitality industry.

He reasoned that such venture could provide additional source of revenue for the ministry, which is ever complaining of lean purse.

 Whatever happened to that plan enunciated in February 2011, barely three months to end the tenure of the government that appointed him?

The former Liberty Stadium main bowl (now Obafemi Awolowo Stadium) has been a shadow of itself as it had not hosted any major football match since Al Ahly of Egypt beat the Shooting Stars on home soil in the 1999 CAF Champions League.

The minister should consider reviving this premier Nigerian stadium.  Possibly, the high turnover of sports ministers is due to their overwhelming interests in football.

Virtually all the preceding 14 sports ministers ended up being football ministers to the neglect of other sports.

Will Dare dare to be different by not being a football minister? Except probably Bolaji Abdulahi who resolved lingering issues in the NFF, football spelt doom for all the other past sports ministers since 1999. This is a big lesson.

 Dare should endeavour to build a functional sports data bank for the sport ministry. Anthony Ikazoboh on September 26, 1990 inaugurated a 25-man National Sports Library Committee under the leadership of Dr. Awoture Eleyae.

The objective was to document all aspects of Nigerian sports. Ikazoboh remarked at the time: “sometimes, records available are too old to depend on for modern treatment of sports”. 

Continuing, the Air Force man noted: “all along, we have depended on half-truths in some cases to decide on issues for lack of reference points and low academic content of publications on sports”.

Over 30 years since, the committee did not achieve the set goal, possibly because months later, Ikazoboh whose project it was, was transferred from the sports ministry to transport.

If there were a functional documentation process at the sports ministry, it will aid the functions of organisers and other administrators.

Planning process would be aided with such records serving as working documents, even for a new comer into sports administration. A body without history will not be able to know its past and evaluate the present and project its future.

With well-articulated programme, Sunday Dare, as in the book of Matthew 12:42 should be able to proclaim: “A greater than Solomon is here”.