They heard from Sanwo-Olu, not Enoh

I doubt that members of the organised private sector have heard from Sports Minister John Enoh and have figured out how to tap into the Nigerian sports industry as is the case in other countries. I say this because the outcome of the last Olympic Games in Paris could have been different for athletes and the nation. On the other hand, the organised private sector has heard from Lagos State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu about the country’s creative arts industry. This is evident in the way the private sector has rehabilitated the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts, formerly known as the National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos.

Recently, Sanwo-Olu said that the renovations of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and the Creative Arts were almost complete and that it would soon open to the public. He therefore thanked the Bankers’ Committee and all stakeholders in the creative sector for their collaboration on the project. The Bankers’ Committee is a strong member of the organised private sector and they have been partners with governments on many issues. When it comes to helping the nation mobilise huge resources for huge projects, they have proven to be reliable organisers and partners. What do I call them then? Patriots of the highest order. These are people who hardly talk. But they talk with the kind of resources they control and make available to our nation.

The Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts was built by the military regime of General Yakubu Gowon and completed in 1976 by the military regime of Olusegun Obasanjo. Its completion coincided with the holding of the Second World Festival of Black and African Arts and Culture (FESTAC 77) in January 1977. The centre was a building I was familiar with and coincidentally, this was in circumstances connected with the personality that President Bola Tinubu named it after that year. Decades ago, my respected elder, Prof. Segun Ojewuyi, a theatre director, used to direct plays that were staged in the corridors of the centre to mark the birthdays of Prof. Wole Soyinka. Since I lived with him when I was an undergraduate at the University of Lagos, he would take me to see the plays he directed. Like all national assets, gleaming and built to international standards but left to deteriorate after its first use, the centre was not properly maintained.

There were Directors General appointed to the centre who tried to put the spark back into a building that was in constant disrepair. It did not catch on. The Lagos State Government had over the years tried to take over a number of poorly managed assets from the Federal Government. Significantly, this happened in relation to the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts and sports facilities including the National Stadium. The argument was that if the Federal Government could not properly utilise and maintain these assets, then the Lagos State Government would. As for the Wole Soyinka Centre for Culture and Creative Arts, renovation began in July 2021 following approval by the Federal Government and the subsequent handover of the national building to the Bankers’ Committee. As a member of the Bankers’ Committee, Mr Segun Agbaje, Group Chief Executive Officer, Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc. said: “There are not many countries that have the talent that we have in entertainment and the arts. All you can do, when you have talented people, is to give them a platform to showcase their best side. We will try to provide a platform where Nigerians who I believe are the best, will have the opportunity to show the world that they are the best…”

You can apply this same sentiment to sports and assume that it is the same way that the organized private sector generally views the sports industry. But are the governing bodies in sports involved with the private sector as they should be? I have listened to the arguments over the nation’s recent unenviable foray into the Paris Olympics. Everyone is blaming everyone else. One athlete recently said that the government was not supporting their preparation efforts. Those who are inclined to side with government officials blame the athletes and say that glory at the games comes first for them than for the nation and that every athlete should therefore be in their best shape for the games. Those who are anti-establishment criticized government officials for being happy to pay athletes a stipend days before the Olympics. They further claim that athletes prepare for a competition in four months that other countries take four years to prepare their athletes for, right? Even the Minister of Sports said that one year was not enough to prepare and expect medals, implying that he was not to blame for the outcome in Paris.

However, we know that governance is a continuum, so there can be no excuse for not having a program that ensures that athletes are adequately prepared as other countries do. In all the discussions about who should be blamed, I have not heard anyone raise the issue of sports officials running sports in a way that most other countries do not do to get the good results that they do. The sports ministry that should be making policy, that does not have the kind of funding that is needed to prepare elite athletes, wants to continue to run sports; and in doing so, the private sector is left out. Efforts that have been made in the past to involve the private sector have been frustrated. The private sector says that it wants to be accountable for the funds that are released and see what the funds are actually spent on.

However, there are allegations that sports officials are eager to collect money from the private sector, spend it, only to claim that they are not accountable to the private sector, but to the sports ministry. There was even a former sports minister who made a statement that the private sector should put whatever funds they wanted to contribute into the pockets of the sports ministry. So the private sector is putting in money, but shouldn’t they know how government officials are spending this money? Of course, every company quietly backed out. Yet, every company could have shown interest in the sports it wanted to support. It could have taken the list of elite athletes involved and sponsored the preparations they needed in any part of the world under world-class coaches in world-class training facilities.

The involvement of the private sector will ensure that government officials do not have to complain about inadequate funding or the new policies of a new sports minister that have a negative impact on the preparation of athletes. But that is not the case. In the case we have a way of preparing athletes that is based on the mentality that the payment of stipends is all that is needed to make athletes perform at their best at the pinnacle of global sports such as the Olympic Games. It is not, and as long as we continue to not organize sports as other sporting nations do, we should not expect the results to be different. The first time I commented on this, there was a sports minister who wanted to pass laws to organize sports on a business basis with the attendant positive results as seen in other countries. That minister left as a result of the politics of the time. Sports and athletes have been trapped in a cycle ever since where they fall prey to the usual uncertainties.

The matter becomes complicated if a sports minister does not analyse the challenges of dealing with athletes holistically to the point of realising that the ministry and the government in general cannot carry the burden. If a minister does not realise that all sports federations should have the autonomy to partner with the private sector and get sponsorship for sporting events and prepare athletes for the big competitions, nothing can change.

It takes conviction for a minister to get those he leads in the right direction. Enoh has not even been heard on the basic principles to make our sport thrive, namely sustainable programmes to develop new athletes and prepare top athletes for the world stage. It means that no one in leadership positions in sport has set the direction to prevent the Paris experience. This does not look good for sport and athletes who want to do their best for the country. When will the private sector hear from the sports minister?