Nigeria sports not short of literature on the way forward, but the political will to execute — Dudu-Orumen

The veteran sports journalist and former Executive Chairman, Edo State Sports Commission, Godwin Dudu-Orumen in an exclusive interview to x-ray sporting activities in Nigeria in 2022, bared his mind on sport administration, funding, dwindling standard of Nigerian football in the period under review. He expressed helplessness over transfer of allegiance to other countries by our sporting youths. The colossal loss of missing out of the World Cup, as well as proffering solutions for a better sporting activities in 2023. Excerpts:

Can we meet you please?

Alright, I’m Godwin Dudu-Orumen, a lawyer, a journalist and a sports businessman. Incidentally, I took my first degree in English Language before studying law, because I wanted to be a sport journalist. In my turbulent teenage when school was not going right, sport kept me out of trouble, mischief and as I grew up, when I found my rhythm, when I became and adult, sport has put food on my table. It helps me in taking care of people around, mentoring people. I own a football academy which has turned out about 2,000 children for free. Although I brought in sponsorship support from Cowbell at some point, friends and chieftains.

Growing up early years in front of a College in Warri, I saw the impact of sports in schools and schools in sports. Then of course at my teenage at Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium, I saw some sports at various levels and I know the power of sports.

Five years after I qualified as a lawyer, I said to myself, what do you want to be remembered for? Where can you leave an impact? So I chose sports. And I think for about 18 years, I ran the country’s most popular TV sports show, “the best of football”. And I established the first sport bar in Nigeria called,”Sportshaq”, from which the concept of viewing centers has come to Nigeria. If you look at it, there must be about 4 million viewing centers in Nigeria employing about 2 staff each. So, my dream, my idea has created about 8 million jobs.

In addition to many young men and women, I have got to look at sport journalism in the strong level. So I feel fulfilled. People call me enthusiastic supporter of football. That makes me happy and that has been my life, sport has been my life. Sport is my life.

In many things sports can do, I am aware of school sports, the amateur sports, professional sports and in a country that has immense potentials like Nigeria, who is into wasting a large part of our resources. The human resources in Nigeria has more capacity of inflow than oil or rice or whatever. Unfortunately, that sector has been ignored and to think that United Nations demographic report says that south of the Sahara 70 per cent of the population is youths, young adults and children. We haven’t done well with our biggest resource…. human.

How would you describe sports administration in Nigeria in 2022?

Well, 2022, what you found or experienced is a contribution of so many years of planlessness. It’s not down to 2022 only. It just happened that we finally have reached the limit of talents. We have lived on talents in this country. We don’t plan, we have no workman ethics. We don’t have the thought of how we get results. We just say, let’s gather those boys, play football and win. Yes in football, talent accounts for 30 per cent of what you need. In any human endeavour, talent is 30 per cent, luck 10 per cent, that’s 40 per cent. Rest of the 60 is organisation, planning, having the right strategy, having the right funding, that’s 60 per cent. And in this 60 per cent, Nigeria is very short on it. That’s why over the years we’ve been winning and we don’t go back to how we won, and you know, how do we improve on it and the rest of it.

So, 2022 was a bad year, we won nothing. We didn’t qualify for the World Cup, and with that went 20 billion advertising spend. If we qualify for the World Cup, the industry captains, corporations and organisations will spend money to promote the World Cup. And the triple effect from the spend company, the brand managers, brand custodians who will have different roles to play in actualizing the brand messages during the World Cup didn’t do anything. If for instance, let’s say if an organisation says, print for me 5,000 or 20,000 T-shirts for this World Cup. You’re going to buy the T-shirts, get a printer to print them. The printer will need ink to print them. The ink seller would buy “tokunbo” tyres for his car. The man who buys tokunbo tyres goes to the vulcanizer. You see, all of those chain value is disrupted because we didn’t qualify. If it goes on like this for some time, then sports might just be in comatose.

Unemployment rate is so high in Nigeria. How has sport engaged the youths in reducing the number and crime?

You see, a sick man can not engage anybody, sport is sick. You have sports administrators, the NOC, they have been there for years and contributed nothing. Look at the President of the NOC, Engr. Habu Gumel, the sport that brought him to that position is dead, right, he hasn’t done anything about it…came in on the platform of tennis , tennis is dead.

The point is this, sport is a reflection of the society. It doesn’t operate in a vacuum. The same elements that work against farming, travels and the rest of it, they all affect sport. How can sport that is poorly managed employ youths? And then, those of us who are promoters, we need to show that there will be return on investment of the brand owners. We have nothing to show because, the talents, before you discover them, they have disappeared. They have gone to Europe. They don’t stay to give you value for money. So there is no way sport that is sick can engage youths.

Now, I grew up with things like: Horse Shield, Lady Manua Cup, Israel Adeyanju Cup, the Nigeria Academic House, those things brought their own engagements and gave youths opportunities to exhibit their talents and it’s either they become professionals or they go to American universities on scholarships. That was the reality with us when we were growing up and that is no longer possible because we have administrators who should long since have left sitting down there and playing dog in a manger and they are even dunce on advice. So, there is nothing sport can do until we tell ourselves the truth that the people we put in position of authority, they have no ideas, nothing to give. People should come around and do the needful.

Nigeria was not at the World Cup 2022. What were the immediate and remote causes?

Again, we go back to the same thing of people not providing good leadership for sports. By 2019, any sensible person would have known that coach Genneth Rohr wasn’t good enough. By 2019, the man had nothing more to offer Nigeria. And for a country that lives mostly on talents, we should have looked for a good coach. You now have a fourth rated European coach. And the NFF, who does little on planning will leave an arsenal team in his hand. And then, we got to a very desperate situation, we were hoping we were going to win. I am a football fan to the core. I stopped watching Super Eagles in the last 4 years, except you will pay me to watch them. You know, it shows you how bad. When we were in a familiar setting, I said listen, can you tell me what style of football the eagles play?

Is it defensive side or attacking side? They couldn’t answer. The team had no character, no colour. They had no dreams, and no ambitions. It was novalgic, and every time you voice it out, this is no team, they are going no where, some paid agents would say, oh, the coach is meeting his target. I say what target? You qualified for the World Cup? A team that qualified for the first time in 1994, and was rated the fifth best footballing team in the world. So what bar? You people have dropped the bar. There was nothing , If we qualified for the World Cup, I would have been surprised.

The truth of the matter is that we have saved tax payers money. Because, if we had qualified,we would have wasted 15–20 billion Naira of government money, saying, they are taking people to Qatar, people who know next to nothing about football, with people who have never seen Eagles play on television, with football agents, NFF officials trading football seriously. I have that squad that should be watching football at home on television would have been there in Qatar. So, it’s just being well that we didn’t go.

We saw same Eagles brilliant at the group stage of AFCON, raising hopes, only to fall like pack of cards at the elimination stage, what went wrong?

Maybe you people were watching it with your heart, because, those of us who watched it with our heads knew that wasn’t sustainable. We didn’t have a team. You see, the Eagles need many things for them to be successful. They have to have a spin, these two goalkeepers, these two center back, these two center mid fielders, these two forward, five, six players..You see, many years ago, if 10 people were given papers, okay, write your possible first 11, all of us, at least, nine will be there. Nine would be on every sheet. But today, I mean in the last six, eight years, the handlers and managers, we don’t know what they do to arrive at selecting the team. They keep changing the players, and when they change, there is no understanding. So I don’t know where you people got your hope from. I wasn’t deceived. Yea, good performance in group stage, what kind of football did they play?

How would you rate sport administration in Nigeria?

It’s poor, it’s very poor. We have people without the right competence and the knowledge of what the business is all about. They are just there. You see zero commitment, they are there to make their pocket fat. I don’t read them at all.

Again let’s look at funding. How has sports funding made or marred sporting activities in the period under review?

I think government at the federal level has given sports what I can call good seed money. It’s what the managers of our sports translate this into. If you have a national team and you file up quality friendly matches to be put live on television station, then, you will get sponsors. Extra monies would come from TV rights, from endorsement, and you have endless categories of endorsements. In my own opinion, or from reliable sources, in the last six, seven years, the Federal Government has given the NFF alone N7 billion. That’s a lot of money. And let us not forget the Olympics, the Commonwealth Games and various sport festivals. Government has done its bit in terms of funding. But,the same government has crippled sports by allowing the wrong administrators to be there, who don’t make decisions in favour of sports, or that will take sports to a new height, but to make their pocket bigger.

Is the National Sports Festival still meeting it’s objective?

It still achieves one thing of bringing children, youths and young adults together. That’s about all. But the original spirit, I think we departed from it a great deal. It was for developmental sports. It was to encourage every state to develop its sporting talents, basically from these areas. But today, you see the states with the most money buying athletes. You would see ‘Musa Abdullahi’ representing Delta State. You see ‘Adeyinka Adebayo’ representing Northeast in boxing, and all like that.

They make things worse by allowing professionals, what they call elite athletes…I think it was a wrong move to allow elite athletes to come into the festival. You get me, I think that the real essence of the sports festival is defeated by the many changes. Today, this sport festival wants its spot in, next festival they have removed it, because the organizing committee has fair advantage somewhere. The other state may have advantage, and they say, no, we don’t have facilities for that. And again, I think moving it from city to city was a good idea. Again, it’s beginning to floor it. I will not be shy to say that original letter of the spirit of the National Sports Festival has been tinted largely.

Who’s your Nigerian sport person of the year 2022 in Nigeria?

That’s very easy, Tobi Amusan. You see an historic rise from Junior in 2014 in Botswana African Youths Championship to be a world class athlete and world record holder, and she’s still 25.

Focus is more on football in Nigeria. What can we do to make other sports come up?

Maybe, football attracts lazy administrators. They don’t want to plan. Other sports require consistency, planning, equipments and facilities. Football, go back home, just buy your son football. His friends will come and use their shirts to make jerseys, they will play football. Football comes easy, that’s why we are there. If you talk about track and field, it means you buy the person shoes,trainers and buy training sprint, right jerseys that are wind resistant. You talk about cricket, so many things are involved, balls, pads…. and now, helmet has come into it. Every other sport requires a lot more than football. So, football is cheap. It also accommodates our laziness, lack of preparation. You just go to the back of the stadium, you see some children, you collect them, give them jerseys, they’ll play and win.

The other sports need what we call adequate planning, right strategies, decent amount of funding, then, they become strong brands. Growing up, my first sport might shock you. Originally, I was a track and field person, followed by Tennis, followed by boxing. Football is number four on my list. It’s like I said, it’s easier to sell unlike these other sports. The other sports are a lot more technical. For football, the player gets the ball, passes to his man, and that one puts it in the net, and we all clap.

Many Nigerian sporting youths have transferred their allegiance to other nations, what can be done to stop this trend?

Well, a lot of people, a lot of Nigerians. Most of them were born there. There’s very little we can do about that other than to make your conditions here attractive. You see, in those days,Tony Edeh, used to be CBN Director, he was an athlete. Modupe Osukoya, Kolawole Abdullahi, they were all here, they go to school in America, finished their education, but every time we want them, they come and represent us. So let’s create that environment. You see, we are the ones pushing them away. Look at Gloria Alozie, she won silver at one of the games, came back, changed her nationality, herself and Obiekwe, changed nationality and became Portuguese, because they were given better conditions. Let’s look at it from this angle, in a country where we produce crude oil, we’ve invested in refineries. But we take the crude out to be refined for us. It is not a sport problem only, it’s leadership. Leadership needs to address things. I had two hours chat with Tammy Abraham’s father trying to persuade him to allow Tammy to play for Nigeria. He just said, okay, okay, I will tell him, the decision is his. But you see, I did it thinking he was going to be convinced. This same Nigeria, Sone Aluko, his father, late Senator Aluko was a year senior in University of Benin, when we wanted him to play for Nigeria, they spoke to him, he refused. The then coach came to me and said he heard that Sone Aluko’s father is my friend. Why don’t I talk to him? So I called him, he said okay, I should give him till later in the day. Later in the day, he said he had spoken to Sone, here is Sone’s phone number, talk to him.

Sone had no reason not going to World Cup 2014 because he was one player who could play in four different positions and he was better than everybody that they took to the World Cup. So, when you want to tell some players to represent Nigeria, when they point to the case of Sone for instance, what do you do? When people come, or our children come from diaspora to represent us, that they are given their chances, not officials asking them for settlement, not officials saying if you don’t pay, you won’t make it to the team and the rest of it.We need to be honest with ourselves, do these things simply, I mean, look at how many Africans players in Qatar 2022. Africans played in 14 countries in the last World Cup. It is a shame we are part of that.

(Cut in)learnt Mbappe is from Cameroon, that he wanted to play for Cameroon, but was told to pay one crazy amount.?

It’s an African thing. You see, in the last World Cup, before now, two brothers, one played for Germany, one played for Ghana, it’s a decision we make. Some are patriotic, like I said, our system here is poor, but your chance of playing in the world cup is greater with Nigeria. Your years as an international player is longer with Nigeria. I mean, look at Tammy, he hasn’t played many matches for England, he’s just there. He didn’t go to the World Cup and he is one of the best, but because Harry Kane is there.

They have a way of using and dumping them?

They don’t dump them. They use them to make sure they don’t represent their countries. That’s why the athletes themselves and their parents should be careful with the decision they make. At the end of the day, it comes down to our not providing and enabling environment.

Another AFCON qualifiers are here. What can we do to be victorious at the tourney and to register our presence at World Cup 2026?

I have answered this question so many times, some many places, they didn’t use it for anything. I have no interest in answering it anymore.

We are in a society with people who do not know what to do. I tell you this, you publish it and they trash it. So for me, providing enabling environment, bring people who have knowledge, people who can work out a plan and strategy to deliver. But, the details one by one, I don’t want to waste my energy.