Welcome to new Minister of Sports

Sports Minister, John Owan-Enoh<br />

I am writing this on Friday morning. A new Minister of Sports for Nigeria has been in office for one week. The sports fraternity welcomes him to the beleaguered sector.

Senator John Owan Enoh does not even have time to ‘warm up’ and head to Budapest ‘23, the theatre of the ongoing feast of global athletics. That would have been his baptism, his first international assignment.

Instead, he settles down at his new desk inside the premises of the Moshood Abiola International Stadium, Abuja, and starts a foray into the uncharted world of sports.

One of the first things he will learn will be the interpretation of the medals table from Budapest. It will reveal, as was the case with several ministers before him, that all is not well with Nigerian sports. Budapest ‘23 has been a barren expedition.

He will also find that there are as many solutions to the myriad of challenges as there are ‘expert advisers’ forcefully expressing them, every one of them claiming to be right, and that failure to heed their advise would bring the world to an end.

In short, lesson number two is that ‘in the matter of sports, particularly football, every Nigerian is an expert.’

On the day the new minister was being sworn in, Nigeria’s men’s national basketball team, D’Tigers, were playing on home ground in Lagos, and losing their African crown to minnows. The team played without most of the country’s best-known players, who ply their trade in the NBA in the United States. The basketball players were either not invited or refused to show up for the Olympics qualifiers.

This may be as a result of outstanding matters from previous experiences, particularly when the players had to protest on the streets of Tokyo during the