See Four–Year Report Card of Team Buhari (2015-2019) – Part 2...

Duro Ikhazuagbe assesses Sports Development Minister, Solomon Dalung’s tenure and concludes that it has been of little gain

That Solomon Dalung remains in office as Minister of Youth and Sports Development till these dying hours of the first tenure of the Muhammadu Buhari administration remains a mystery.

Nigeria’s sports have never had it so bad in terms of governance like we witnessed it under Dalung: a novice in the sector that refused to learn the ropes in order to be fully abreast of what it takes to run the sector.

From one controversy to another, the man from Langtang in Plateau State, simply refused to tow the line of his predecessor in office, Bolaji Abdullahi, who took his time to study how to manage the sector. Instead, the Tarok man resorted to use of tactics never known to solving sports problems. With barely days to ending his reign in that office, Dalung is leaving sports worse off than he met it. Some of the crises he created in some of the national sports federation are festering and going to outlive his tenure.

Dalung who was part of the 11-man transition committee headed by Ahmed Mohammed Joda to midwife the incoming cabinet, was surprisingly handed the Youth and Sports Development Ministry in October 2015 by President Buhari. A man whose only previous association with the ministry was being a part of Nigeria’s delegation to Mali to cheer the Super Eagles at the 2002 Africa Cup of Nations in Bamako suddenly became the Games Master General of the country.

Interestingly, of all the problems in Nigerian sports, what first caught the fancy of Dalung was the power tussle between his kinsman, Christopher Giwa and Amaju Melvin Pinnick. He went neck deep involved in trying to ‘settle’ the leadership tussle in the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) board despite world football governing body FIFA recognising the September 30 elections in Warri that ushered Pinnick into office. Even as a lawyer, Dalung refused to accept that the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) in Switzerland (the supreme court of sports affairs, globally) had previously thrown out Giwa’s appeal. Dalung instead stood on the side of Giwa, claiming he had a Supreme Court judgment pronouncing him the duly elected president of the NFF board. He insisted that as a lawyer who swore to uphold the constitution, CAS ruling (in Switzerland) cannot be superior to Nigerian laws. The crisis reached a boiling point when policemen were deployed to seal the NFF headquarters in Wuse Zone 6 Area of Abuja in order to prevent the breakdown of law and order at the Glass House. The matter dragged on till the end of the tenure

of that board late last year before another election gave Pinnick a second term mandate. In between, it took the intervention of the Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (Mr. President was on vacation at the time) for Nigeria to escape a FIFA ban that would have prevented the country from participating at the last World Cup in Russia and other sundry competitions our national teams participated in under the Dalung watch. Rather than being remorseful for the role he played in the crisis, the Plateau man went on the comical lane of inferring that there was no point Super Eagles going to Russia for the World Cup as the team was not capable of winning the trophy.

Of course the rot in Nigerian sport had started festering before Dalung took charge, it is on record that all the moves made by his predecessor to turn around Nigeria’s fortunes in global sports fiestas were jettisoned. Did we fare better at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil after returning from London 2012 with no medal? The matter is better left to sports historians to determine the place of Dalung in Nigeria’s sport chronicle as the longest serving sports minister to date. The lone bronze won by the John Mikel Obi-inspired Under-23 Dream Team IV was the result of the ‘never say die’ Nigerian spirit of the boys under Samson Siasia’s watch. All that transpired in Atlanta when the team went on training tour but was abandoned by Dalung’s ministry remains very fresh in the minds of football followers in the land and beyond. The shame and angst caused by the total neglect of the team despite the fact that there was a vote for Team Nigeria’s training and participation at Rio 2016 is also a sore point of Dalung’s tenure.

Anyone who listened to Dalung saying that training was not necessary for Team Nigeria to do well at competitions will not be astounded by his cluelessness as to how the system works.

“The disabled athletes have shown that all you need is a winning mentality and not too much preparation. They trained under the same condition with their able bodied counterparts but they are winning medals now.” This statement was the height of the cluelessness of the man saddled with running the country’s sports.

Twice, Super Falcons won the Africa Women’s Cup of Nations without any serious input from his office. The first time the girls had to resort to embarrassing protest to draw attention to their plight.

Dalung, a self-acclaimed expert in conflict resolution, succeeded largely in creating conflicts in the Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF), Nigeria Gymnastic Federation, the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), the Nigeria Rugby Football Federation (NRFF) and of course,