Abdullahi dissects problems of Nigerian sports

By Tony Ubani
After Nigeria’s woeful performance at the London 2012 Olympics, President Goodluck Jonathan ordered the restructuring of the sports system for better results in future.

Bolaji Abdullahi seems to have started work in that direction with a directive that the Nigeria Premier League, a supposed nursery for the national football teams, should suspend the resumption of the football season until they answer many questions, including sponsorship money and TV rights. Excerpts:

Let’s start with the burning issue of the League. Stakeholders are waiting for the start of the league which has been put off on your advice.

How far have you gone in addressing the issues that forced you to suspend the kick off such that by the next two months we can start?

The issue of the league is one of many issues. The league is a big product and the value of every business revolves around its integrity. And so, once you have questions hanging around its integrity, issues would arise that will make it very unattractive to any investor. Under such situation people will not come to the stadium, investors will not put their money.

Sports Minister, Bolaji Abdullahi

What we want to do is to put up a medium to long term plan to reform the Nigeria Premier League which I think is very necessary not only for football but for youth employment in Nigeria and our national teams as well.

In the immediate term we have to deal with a lot of issues and largely we have to deal with matters bordering on sponsorship, broadcast rights and the administration of the league totally. On the issue of sponsorship, we have almost resolved that.

We have had several meetings and consulta-tions which have been fruitful with the two sponsors involved.

But we are not eager to ask them to release funds because we have to ask questions on how the previous money was spent. We have had situations where those who should get the funds are not getting enough; players are being owed salaries and the sponsors are not getting real value for their money.

There’s also the issue of broadcast right which even the current board of the Nigeria Premier League have been asking questions themselves. Are we getting real value for our league? Is the league not heavily undervalued and how can the clubs benefit more from these rights? Its  logical that we sort everything out so that the league will start on a clean and more attractive note.

Are you not worried that 80% of the clubs are government owned? In this your reform, are you also working in that direction?

To your first question, yes I am worried that it is so but it is an aberration that we have to live with for now until we can reach a situation that can encourage individuals and private organisations to own a club.

The individuals and organisations need to have confidence. Once we are able to clean up the league, then it becomes easier for private investment to come in. For me, any talk of reform in terms of ownership must have short and long view on how to go about it.

If we remove government clubs just to have private clubs, how do you replace them immediately? I have been talking with my colleagues from other countries who have faced this kind of situation in the past and how they got by it and such information  I am gathering are very enriching.

Now how does the Nigeria Football Federation come in because they have the major role to play? It is the NFF that has the franchise that has produced the league. It is their product. And then how does the Sports Ministry come?

What we are saying is that the NFF owns the league and the NFF is a parastatal under the National Sports Commis-sion. The line of relationship is such that we at the NSC can work out a broad frame of policy which they can build upon.

But on those things that are core football issues, there is no mix up. It is clear the Federation should take charge of those exclusive matters. This is part of what we’re doing to properly position all aspects of administration.

But I can gladly say that right from the beginning we have been working together on these set objectives and the Federation has been carried along.

Indeed, this clean up of issues around the league is a joint work and that is why it has been going on very well. It has been a joint project with mutual respect and that is how we intend to carry on to the benefit of Nigerian football and sports indeed.

We have many national teams like U-17, U-20 and the Eagles. But we always lump everything together for just one company. This pattern has reduced revenue for the system as the teams have been under-valued and has denied other companies from healthy competition.

The major problem is that we still have this beggarly mentality and so when we get that kind of small money from anybody we are so grateful rather than properly checking  the value of our products and programmes.  But we don’t bother to evaluate what we have. It is when we are able to do that that we can then attach value to each of our teams and say this is the minimum we want and if you don’t have that we won’t accept.

Can’t we group this teams and evaluate them properly and as the minister you invite companies to take them as sponsors?

I don’t want to do that because that will mean operating within the same old philosophy. I don’t want to be the one going to companies to come and sponsor our teams or leagues. The Minister has no business doing that when we are functioning well with the system…

But the system is peculiar; football is not run as it is in England for instance…

No, I disagree. I know it is not exactly the same now but I won’t agree with that belief that our system is peculiar when we can turn it around and make it function properly as in some other places.

The way we are now, it is not easy to put any amount on a team and invite people to take them when we don’t even know the actual value but if we are able to get a system that puts football league in the hands of private people and run football league as proper business, then we can begin to move very fast forward. It is about making profit at the end of the day.

Another issue is that of the media. You cannot run a successful league without the media. The success of the English League lies heavily around the media.

It’s a media invention; it is an event tied strongly around the media. In Nigeria how do we consume the product? The only channel now for our football is through DSTV – a complete monopoly. We don’t have alternative for now.

So when you have DSTV through SuperSport buying into the league, they pay you what they want because they know you don’t  have an alternative outlet. If there is a process of bidding that brings in say about six companies and you say before you get the rights, you must meet one, two, three things. Things won’t be the same again.

In the past,  an attempt was made to achieve that…

It is because we are still running it like a private business that is why it is like that.

Continues tomorrow