‘Bad corporate governance to blame for sport problems’
BAD corporate governance in sports institutions, football in particular has been blamed for the many problems bedeviling the sector in Zimbabwe, says Nqobile Ngulube, a holder of an executive diploma in sports management from the Zimbabwe Institute of Management.
He also holds a post graduate diploma in corporate governance and strategic leadership from the Midlands State University.
Ngulube said he is an ardent football fan and his dream was to see a paradigm shift in the way sports associations in general and football in particular are run. He said most of the challenges faced by sports clubs, if traced properly, will reveal that those challenges in one way or the other, have something to do with non-adherence to the dictates of good corporate governance.
“As I was going through my studies, I discovered that corporate governance was a very important factor in everything. Most of the times we just preach good corporate governance without really understanding what kind of an animal that is. We take that at face value while doing the opposite. This was one key thing I learnt during my studies and if you don’t follow the dictates of good corporate governance, the future of our sport and football in particular will be in jeopardy,” said Ngulube.
He said it was high time popularity was not used in the hunt for public office office bearers, but people with requisite administration qualifications that will help them run those organisations professionally.
“Football, for example, is a business, a profession just like an accountant or doctors. You can’t be a doctor overnight and since football is now a business, it must be run by qualified people so that we don’t have these challenges. If you check on a global stage, football is one of the most lucrative industries so professions must be run by professionals in that particular area, but in our case you will find that anyone with influence or money can be ushered into very critical positions. That is where we then have these never ending problems and squabbles,” he said.
He said it was probably the right time now to come up with a sports administrators association, a body that will register all qualified persons and if one does not belong to that body, then the person will not be eligible to run for a sports administration position.
“We have people failing to interpret the constitution, basic things which are in black and white and surely you cannot talk of good corporate governance. Most of these problems we have are caused by people choosing not to follow their own constitution. We need to move with the world not to be stagnant. However, as long as we fail to follow our own constitution, we won’t go anywhere as a sporting nation,” said Ngulube.