From London to Rio: What has changed? Part Three

By Bolaji Abdullahi

Former Nigeria sports and youth minister Bolaji Abdullahi discusses the problems that faced the country's campaign at the Olympic Games four years ago

From London to Rio
When President Jonathan called a retreat on sports in 2012, the idea was to integrate some of these key lessons and begin to develop a new systematic framework that could lead us to a better outing in 2016. Some of the key conclusions of the retreat are as follows:
1. Identify 5 key sports that give us competitive advantage and designate them as Olympic sports. We agreed on boxing, weight-lifting, taekwondo, wrestling, and athletics.
2. Develop a new funding architecture, which would guarantee sustainable funding support for these identified sports. The strategy includes:
a. A medium-term (2013-2016) sports budget
b. Sustainable revenue sources, which include:
i. Reform of the Nigerian lottery to deliver N48billion/year
ii. Private sector sponsorships projected at N5billion/year
iii. Federal Budget and additional ‘sin tax’ on tobacco and alcohol projected to deliver N2.2billion annually.
It was estimated that the National Sports Commission then would require about N50 billion for both the elite and development sports over the three year period. A National High Performance Sports Fund was to be established that would warehouse the fund generated for elite sports from corporate sponsorship and the lottery. While the management of the Fund would be chaired by the Minister of Sports, approval for spending would only be given in council with other members representing corporate sponsors, ministry of finance, elite sports federations and sports journalists’ council. This is to give confidence to the private sector sponsors who have been reluctant to put their money in sports for fear that it would not be efficiently managed and also to ring-fence such fund from direct government interference.
3. Commence a process of early discovery of talent by bringing sport back into schools by creating pathways within our school systems that allow children to play sports.
4. Develop a high performance system that integrates sports science with elite athlete development that help athletes and coaches to optimize training and performance and deploy enhanced technology to deliver insight and analysis that enable athletes  to develop strategies and tactics for competition.
5. Develop a performance-based funding system that delivers grants directly to athletes.
As we rose from the retreat, the President himself announced to the nation that the plan that we have set out should lead us to better outcome in the next Olympics in Rio. He, in fact, announced that our target is 5 gold medals. Even though I saw the president’s enthusiasm and commitment as great window of political opportunity, I was not as optimistic. I believed also that if we were able to execute our plans, we should see some radical improvements from our previous performance. But I had no doubt in my mind that if we kept at it, by the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo we would be on the medals table and more importantly, we would be able to show how we got there.
The work we started was on-going; even though so much has changed since 2012. However, if we so wish, we could pick up some of these interventions where we left off, correct mistakes where they have been made, sustain what is working, build on the foundations and improve on what has a reasonable chance to succeed and deliver results. I still believe that there is a great opportunity to carry out the kind of holistic revision that was envisaged. Maybe, not in time for Rio, but certainly for the future.
Concluded.
Read the first part here
Read the second part here

- ABDULLAHI, FORMER MINISTER OF SPORTS, DELIVERED THIS PAPER AT  THE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE AFRICAN SPORTS MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION, ABUJA, JUNE 16, 2016