By

Dr Christian Emeruwa

As a young sports officer observing from the wings I have seen how fantastic ideas that would have transformed our sport story in this country turned into a mere plan that failed to see the light of day due to lack of government financial backing. 

Back then our budgeting use to be what they refer to as the envelope system which means you draft your budget and submit and government decides what to approve and release even after approval the funds are not released as at when due because of other contending matters of national importance . 

This is why past sport administrators like DG’s deviced various means to raise funds for various sport programmes some of these took off and were sustained others failed to take off while others resort to borrowing to cover the shame of government don’t forget as civil servants and government official you cannot say everything . 

Which brings me again to a concern I have regarding the current national sports commission as it relates to funding of the commission . 

My concern is that if the nigeria budgeting system for sports does not change it may be difficult for us to experience the desired change for sports in nigeria . 

From my assessment of our current situation there will be need to inject billions of naira into sports infrastructure upgrade and maintenance not to talk of other innovative additions like technological innovations and other necessary structures that would make our sport attractive to investors … 

Therefore it is important for us to begin to explore ways by which sport can benefit from an emergency intervention fund to reactivate sports in nigeria without such dedicated funding system to inject in the next three years it may be difficult to really attain our full potentials in sports . 

No matter our ideas and plans if there is a cut or lack of adequate funding and judicious utilization of such funds we may just see yet again another era of yore I kind of feel that the momentum needs to be sustained until we start to see the desired results.