Article published in The Nation Newspaper
26/05/2010
A plea for Sports Kits: As we send off the Green Eagles with Presidential Dinners and prayers, let our President GL-J and our VP Namadi Sambo, our corporate heads and you and me look over our shoulders and see what sport support is left behind in our 70,000 schools and youth clubs for the next generation whether the Green Eagles pass or fail. If only we put similar resources and passion into school library books and footballs, our youth would have a ‘child-friendly environment’. When last did your state government or corporate body buy a single library book or football for schools? Granted that some states, like Lagos State and its ‘Adopt a Sport/Athlete’ Programme are improving youth sport. However 20-30 million youth have no library books or FIFA footballs in their school not to talk of other essentials for events like javelin, hurdles, etc. Shame! Sport is not a waste or diversion but core curriculum, motivational, exercise for brain and body, a forge for friendship, help in conflict management, an outlet for youth energy and an award winning profession for those with talent and tenacity. No sport= no opportunity! In spite of these sport is neglected by government even as a cheap weapon for achieving MDGs in schools.
Though football is a low tech game, we have no footballs in schools. With 70,000 schools it is not nuclear physics to provide 10 balls/school to mark 2010 World Cup at N2,4b. Imagine every school receiving federal footballs. The country is awash with Corporate Nigeria’s brazen capitalising on our poverty and passion for football with thousands of multi-million naira billboard adverts, viewing centres and millions of T-shirts which do not improve youth football ability. Think about this: No Nigerian child can kick an ‘advert football’ or acquire football skills by looking at all the billboard advert footballs.
When will Corporate Nigeria have the ‘bright idea’ of supplimenting the billboard advert footballs with a ‘reality football’ supply of speciallly logoed FIFA rated Footballs for schools. Football fever, football frenzy, football fiesta focused on South Africa are useless to development without authorities and Corporate Nigeria making schools ‘Sport and Football Friendly Schools’ and providing opportunities in neighbourhood clubs. Until Nigeria ‘thinks youth’ and spends more on sport than on ‘Billboard Sport’ to paraphrase Professor Soyinka’s ‘Billboard Politics’ we are depriving youth of their ‘Right to Sport’ and killing our next generation of champions needed in future Olympics and World Cups. Even the armed forces is denied full participation in world shooting championships because they do not have the right guns. No planning today means planning for our future failure and increasing unemployment.
A 50th Anniversary consignment of 70,000 or 700,000 Green and White footballs signed by Nigerian football greats with or without corporate logos would have a bigger impact on the youth than anniversary fireworks, parades, ‘Billboard Sport’ and the ‘Mindless Misdirection of the Masses’ that has created 1000+ or more instant millionaires but no development, permanent structures or youth centres. This millionaire myopic idiocy plaguing our Corporate psychy should be stopped by law as it is not ‘good psychology’ in poorly developed Nigeria. Watch, we will soon have a ’Billboard 50th Anniversary’ with no substance!
We await annual N200,000 ‘Emergency Book Boxes’ for each of our 70,000 schools to address the ‘Reading Book Deficit’. So schools need ‘Books And Balls’. These are not nuclear physics or difficult choices for an educated leadership with a lecturer President and architect Vice President wanting to empower they youth and lead Nigeria. Three months is enough to execute these projects for our 20-30 million students in schools to give them a level playing field with other youth worldwide and enable them to have fulfilled dreams by 1-10-2010.
In Nigeria our political, administrative and corporate classes have perfected the malicious method of ‘wasting the brain and the body’ our our greatest asset –the youth. No books, no sports, ‘text or buy to become an instant reality millionaire’. This policy is not a mistake, deliberate denigration of dignity. ‘It is better that a millstone be placed around their neck ..than they harm a child’. Is this different from what tyrants did? Surely our youth are not enemies of Nigeria. Why are we waiting for UNESCO, UN book aid when our bookstores and publishers have just finished the fantastic 2010 Book Fair showing our massive book capacity and need. Yet we still ‘prefer’ second hand books from abroad. Insult! Nigeria with thousands of good text and story book authors needs no ‘Book Aid’. We need a ‘Books Paid’ Program in government budgets. Government should meet with the Corporate Nigeria to help meet MDGoals and urge that whenever they make an instant millionaire they spend ‘A Counterpart Million’ on permanent ‘A Books for School Libraries Project’ or ‘Equip a youth Centre’ Project with N1m equipment and make their millions more meaningful to the masses from where their profit comes. If not Nigerians will soon spit on such instant millionaires and their corporate sponsors. And say ‘No to Babangida’.
As we CountdowNigeria@50-120 use your connections to encourage the Goodluck Jonathan / Sambo Team to use Nigeria’s money in their care to fund a ‘ Adopt Nigerian Youth’ Program and give all schools, public and private, 50th Anniversary Emergency ‘Library Boxes’ and ‘Sport Kits’. Miraculously, we all remain Nigerians, even after 50 years of mental and physical abuse, darkness and suffering!