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Duro Ikhazuagbe

FIFA Council Member, Mr. Amaju Melvin Pinnick, has urged Nigerians not to expect too much from the country’s athletes at the next Olympic Games scheduled to hold in Los Angeles, United States of America in 2028.

Speaking yesterday at this year’s Personality Guest Lecture of the Faculty of Education, University of Ibadan, Pinnick Insisted that the best Nigeria should expect is one or two gold and not 10.

He spoke on the topic: The Challenges of Sports Infrastructure And Maintenance In Nigeria: Prospect for Podium Performanceat the Trenchad Hall of the country’s first university.

“Winning an Olympic gold medal is not an overnight thing to achieve. It takes eight years or more preparations. But Nigerians don’t want to hear this. They expect our athletes to win like six or seven gold medals despite not adequately preparing the athletes to achieve this,” began Pinnick who is immediate past president of the NFF who also doubles as a CAF executive committee member.

He pointed at the failure of Team Nigeria at the last Paris 2024 Olympiad as one of the results of a long term lack of the right sporting infrastructures in place for the country’s athletes to train.

“We have everything to excel in sports in terms of talents but unfortunately, lack of infrastructure as well as poor maintenance culture of the existing, decaying ones make it difficult for our athletes to reach their full potentials.”

The FIFA Council Member pointed at the Godswill Akpabio Stadium in Uyo as the only sports facility in the country that meets FIFA standard in hosting a grade A football event. “Even at that, that Uyo stadium cannot host a World Cup match because it does not have hospitality suites that is a prerequisite for such a stadium. The National Stadium in Lagos has been abandoned for too long and now in a state of decay while the Moshood Abiola Stadium in Abuja needs upgrading.”

Pinnick pointed in the direction of South Africa and Morocco as countries with the right facilities in hosting global events. “The South Africans hosted the World Cup in 2010 and are maintaining the facilities while Morocco has built sporting infrastructure that make her the envy of the rest of the continent at the moment.”

For Nigeria to truly take her place in global sports, the FIFA Council member urged the Federal Government  to adopt the Public-Private-Partnership in going into infrastructure investment.

“The Federal Government can help with the right legislation that will spur interested individuals, social entrepreneurs and organizations to see the construction and management of sports infrastructure as a worthwhile venture.”

Pinnick commended President Bola Tinubu for the reintroduction of the National Sports Commission (NSC) and the appointment of Malam Shehu Dikko as Chairman of the commission. He however stressed that there is the need to go beyond just nomenclature change even as he vouch for the capability of Dikko to deliver on the President’s mandate.

“I am advocating strongly with all sense of responsibility not just a new NSC but one in which professionalism, competence and creativity are the driving words. I am talking of a compact body with a Chairman and one highly recommended person from each of the six geopolitical zones, and a Secretary who is highly knowledgeable , transparent and intelligent. This will be a body committed and focused on real development of Nigeria sport. This will gradually shift our attention from mere participation in competitions to actual development of sports and maintenance of critical infrastructure,” concludes the top football administrator.