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By Abiodun Adewale
Following the swearing in of the new Minister of Sports Development, Senator John Enoh, on Monday, stakeholders have tasked him on sports development, The PUNCH reports.
Enoh was sworn in by President Bola Tinubu alongside 45 other ministers.
The former Cross River lawmaker will head the sports ministry after it was separated from the new Ministry of Youth.
Before his swearing-in on Monday, Enoh visited his predecessor, Sunday Dare, as part of his “strategic engagements with stakeholders.”
“I visited my brother, Hon. Sunday Dare, the immediate past Minister of Sports and Youth Development at his Abuja residence. The visit allowed me to exchange ideas with him on issues bothering sports administration and development.
“This visit is part of my ongoing strategic engagements with stakeholders within the sports family in preparation for my assuming office as Minister of Sports Development,” Enoh said.
Enoh’s predecessor, Dare, had championed the National Sports Industry Policy, which was designed to thrive on infrastructure, incentives and investment. The policy is to make the funding and control of sports development — going forward — evenly shared between the private sector and the government, while sports like football and basketball will no longer be just for leisure.
Chairman, Lagos State Athletics Association, Solomon Alao, charged the new minister to ensure the proper implementation of the policy.
“The challenge of administration in Nigeria before now has been continuity. Everybody comes and they have a fresh idea and want to start from a clean slate. There is no such thing as a clean slate, you start from where you are, you build on what you have and leave a legacy and someone will come after you,” Alao told The PUNCH.
“There is a sports policy that has been put together, he has to look at that, look at the merits and build on it during implementation. And he must not waste time to make the best use of the time he will be in office to save the generation of athletes we have,” Alao added.
Despite the huge amount of money invested in rehabilitating major stadiums across the country in the last four years.
A former Vice President of the Nigeria Olympic Committee Lanre Glover tasked the new minister on the need to pay attention to infrastructural development.
“The first thing that I think he should do is to take a tour of the infrastructure in the sports industry. The primary function of the ministry is to ensure we have facilities because without it, we can hardly do anything. The ones we have are dilapidated. Look at Lagos, go to most of the states that have federal facilities, even in Abuja that was just renovated recently and if care is not taken, it will go down again,” Glover said.
Glover added that Enoh must give sports federations the room to operate without undue interference.
“National federations must also be fully autonomous. The ministry has responsibilities but the federations can be independent and source for their own funds. They can only take grants from the ministry. And that will bring mutual respect between the federations and the ministry. That will even foster their relationship,” Glover added.
Flowing from the call for independence of federations, the task force chairman of the Professional Footballers Association, Harrison Jalla, however, urged Enoh to wade into the lingering legal battles in football and some other sports.
“The minister has to bring sanity into Nigeria football by insisting on an amendment of the Nigeria Football Federation statutes to ensure equity, equal and fair representation to all statutory bodies that make up the NFF. There are several cases in court with other federations,” Jalla told The PUNCH.
Also, Chairman Ondo State Football Association, Dele Ajayi, also charged Enoh to ensure efficient use of funds and incentives in motivating athletes.
“The ministry must be efficient in terms of financing athletes. So, he has to focus on getting funds so that we can be well represented, especially at multi-sports events like the African Games, Commonwealth and the Olympic Games.