Don’t be ‘minister of football’, Kofar-Soro advises Dare

A former Katsina State Director of Sports, Alhaji Aliyu Kofar-Soro has called on the minister of sports, Mr. Sunday Dare to avoid actions that would portray him as the minister of football.

Nigerian sports ministers are usually accused of over concentrating on football to the detriment of the ‘lesser sports’.

Consequently Kofar-Soro in a chat with Daily Trust yesterday said the new sports minister has good intention but if he is not careful, he would end up repeating the mistake of his predecessors.

The sports administrator’s advice is coming on the heels of the recent meetings between the minister and embattled leaderss of the Nigeria Football Federation.

He said “To be sincere, it is even my desire to go and see the Hon. Minister myself because if he is not careful, at the end of the day, he is not going to achieve anything.

“He will end up being the minister of football just like sports ministers before him.

“We have a lot of sporting activities in Nigeria. Football is just one of them. So I think he has to focus particularly on grassroots sports development.

“I am making this passionate appeal because if you look at our performance in the All Africa Games in Morocco, we came second and people are celebrating.

“What are we celebrating when Egypt won over 90 gold medals and we won 40 something? So what are we celebrating?. Just look at the gap. We are yet to be there. Egypt penetrated weightlifting which is one of our strong areas.”

Kofar-Soro also said instead of allowing himself to be derailed by the self inflicted problems of the NFF, the minister should pay more attention on improving sporting facilities.

According to him, there can never be sports without standard sporting facilities.