I AM writing this on Saturday morning, 26 October, 2024 immediately after my early Muslim prayers. I have just checked the timing for the El Clasico later in the day and it is reading 8.00pm Nigeria time. I was in the Santiago Bernabue when Real Madrid beat Barcelona 2-0 in the same fixture in March 2020. It was a spectacle.
But it’s not the El Clasico on my mind as I write this. It’s my involvement with the investigative panel set up by the most recent Minister of Sports Development, Senator John Owan Enoh, that is on my mind. At the time of writing, Enoh was the “outgoing sports minister.” Probably by the time this is published, his transition to another Ministry might be complete and he would be the “former sports minister.”
I decided to publish my account of stewardship in the “Alao Panel”, as some of my colleagues in the media have dubbed the Paris 2024 investigative committee, for the primary purpose of accountability. Ordinarily, what Nigerians should be reading now is the report of our committee, but events of the past few days have put the publication of the report on hold.
Following our inauguration on 25 September, 2024, we have worked nearly every day, interviewing people at home and abroad that could provide answers to our seven-point terms of reference on events at the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. We presented our report to Enoh in his office on Tuesday, 22 October, 2024 and he told us to get ready for our presentation to the Nigerian public on Friday, 25 October. On Wednesday, 23 October, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu announced a federal cabinet shuffle that scrapped the Ministry of Sports Development and transferred Enoh to the Ministry of Trade and Investment. By the time my committee arrived back in his office on Friday, 25 October, the Ministry of Sports Development did not exist anymore!
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That Friday morning, I had prepared a 3 page summary of our committee’s 54 page report that I planned to read to the media as the chairman of the panel. I titled it “Highlights of the Committee’s Resolutions and Recommendations” and I had an electronic copy in my phone ready for circulation to the media via Whatsapp messaging. But, there were no journalists to be seen at the presumed venue of our presentation. The moment President Tinubu announced his cabinet shuffle, Enoh had put everything on hold.
The Minister ushered us into his office and explained the reason for his action. He didn’t want to be seen carrying on any function as ‘Minister of Sports Development’ when the Ministry had been scrapped and would be replaced by a National Sports Commission. He didn’t want to impose the implementation of our committee’s report on the in-coming Chairman of the National Sports Commission by publicizing our presentation. He had decided to add our report and recommendations to the hand over notes that he was preparing for the incoming Chairman of the NSC.
Timeliness is everything. My committee was desperate for our report to be published immediately as we knew that millions of Nigerians, especially stakeholders in sports, had been waiting to hear the outcome of our month-long investigations. But we would have been selfish and even stupid not to see the correctness of the Minister’s decision. Really, it was a matter of common sense that this was the right thing for him to do to avoid embarrassing himself and, indeed, us members of the committee. When the new Chairman of the National Sports Commission assumes office, he will see in the file handed over to him our submissions and decide what to do with it. This article is NOT an official statement on behalf of my committee nor on behalf of the Minister. This is simply a journalistic account of my experiences working in the Paris 2024 investigative panel. If my committee members and the Minister himself get to read this, they would be getting to know about it for the first time just like every other Nigerian. Certainly, I did not need anyone’s clearance to write aboutbmy personal experiences and I did not ask for any.
So, would I be sharing some insights into the findings and recommendations of the investigative committee? Not a chance! The content of that document will remain confidential unless “government” decides to publish it. Remember, government is a continuum, no matter the nomenclature of the office holders. The only hint I will drop here is that one of the most widely circulated assumptions about what happened in the Nigerian team at the Paris Olympics, DID NOT HAPPEN! Enough said.
Now, let me seize the opportunity of this not-so-helpful post-mortem to tell the story of how I came to head the investigative committee in the first place. Minister John Owan Enoh called me on his return from the Paralympic Games in Paris to say he wanted to investigate some of the issues that exposed Nigeria to bad press at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Pivotal amongst those issues was the omission of a US-based athlete, Favour Ofili, from the women’s 100 meters event.
The Minister said he had promised Nigerians that the matter would not be swept under the carpet and anyone found culpable would be brought to book. He wanted me to be a member of the panel that would investigate the matter.
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I asked the Minister why he hadn’t just given the assignment to an internal administrative panel in the ministry. The Ofili matter seemed to be straightforward enough and I also asked why he hadn’t even placed temporary suspensions on some officials pending the outcome of full investigations. Enoh explained to me that the Ofili issue wasn’t as straightforward as I thought (I also realized this in the course of our investigations). Besides, he didn’t want to use his Ministry staff because some of them might be implicated in what went wrong. He wanted an independent panel. It was his second reason that made me accept the assignment.
However, I didn’t realize that he would make me the Chairman of the panel until I saw my name in the media. There were six other members, each of us drawn from different geo-political zones of the country. I found that a bit weird at first, but again, it proved to be a wise decision in the tribalistic and ethnically sensitive country that is Nigeria. Other members of the panel are Godwin Enakhena, Hajiya Rakiya Mohammed, Dr. Abubakar Ago, Ugo-Oleka Nnenne Akudo, Aliyu Mohammed and Barr. Victor Okangbe who also doubled as our secretary.
Not surprisingly, the first comments of disapproval of the Committee came from within the sports fraternity itself. I belong to quite a number of WhatsApp groups of eminent people in the Nigerian sports industry, the foremost of them being the Family United By Sports (FUBS). A few members posted broadsides at me and even questioned my acceptance of such an assignment. But there were quite a lot more people who gave me support and encouragement in private chats and phone calls. In fact, when one of them called to ‘congratulate’ me, I asked if it was a chieftaincy title that I had been given that he was congratulating me over! I noticed that my caller was a bit offended by my response, so when other people also started congratulating me, I just said “thank you, thank you.”
For the benefit of those who might have missed the specific issues that my committee was asked to investigate, here are the seven “Terms of Reference” we were given:
1. To find out the cause(s) of error in the inscription of events for Ofili Favour at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
2. To investigate the incident surrounding the Competition Equipment for Ese Ukpeseraye, the cyclist that represented Nigeria at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
3. To investigate the doping issues that occurred during the Games.
4. To investigate the contract agreement of Actively Black Company with the Nigeria Olympic Committee.
5. To find out the claims of Coach Abisola Olajuwon’s non-payment of allowances during the Games by the Nigeria Basketball Federation and the Federal Ministry of Sports Development.
6. To recommend measures that would prevent future occurrence of similar situations; and
7. To recommend any other strategy that may contribute towards a successful participation of Team Nigeria at future Olympic Games.
The first five terms of reference were on specific issues that happened at the Olympic and Paralympic Games, while the last two terms are on recommendations and general issues. My committee applied ourselves fully to the assignment,but we will leave the Nigerian public to judge our performance IF AND WHEN our report is made public. But, as a public commentator myself, not just Chairman of the investigative panel, I am willing to make some guess on what is likely to happen to our report.
I have no doubt in my mind that the out-going Minister of Sports Development would have published our report and implemented our recommendations on all seven terms of reference that he gave us. When we interviewed him (he was actually the first to face our panel), he answered our probing questions frankly and we deliberately publicized the fact that we had quizzed him in order to set the tone for other respondents. The tactic worked to perfection as, if the Minister could face our panel, no one else could be too big to be summoned. In the event, we got full cooperation from nearly all our respondents.
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So, I’m confident that the Minister would have implemented our recommendations, particularly on the specific issues that happened at the Olympic and Paralympic Games where he was directly involved. But, for the incoming Chairman of the National Sports Commission, I won’t be surprised if he is not particularly excited about our first five terms of reference. Those issues, as deeply interested as Nigerians are in them, didn’t happen under his watch. He might simply want to close the book on the Paris 2024 adventure, and focus on our last two terms of reference which are recommendations on how to achieve better performances for Nigerian sports in the future. We will have to wait and see.
Incidentally, the new Chairman of the National Sports Commission, Mr. Shehu Dikko, is a person that is very well known to me. Even before he came to national limelight as Chairman of the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) and later, as Vice President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), I had cause to publish one of his contributions in my weekly column, SOCCERTALK, back in the day. He was the very first reader to whom I devoted the headline and whole body of my column because of the quality of his contribution on that occasion. If I remember correctly, my headline to his brilliant article was “Take A Bow, Shehu Dikko.” Many years after, he had the opportunity to implement the ideas he espoused in his article when he got into the saddle at the NPFL and NFF. I am confident that Dikko will find some useful tips in my committee’s recommendations such that he would not throw everything overboard. Enough said on that as well.
Back to the former Minister of Sports Development, Senator John Owan Enoh, a relationship has been established and I can only wish him the very best in his next station at the Ministry of Trade and Investment. But first, I must congratulate him on his tenure in Nigerian sports. He was so passionate and committed to his assignment.
I was pleasantly surprised when Enoh summarized perfectly the three major challenges facing Nigerian sports at his very first media parley with sports journalists in Lagos in September, 2023. I was invited with my colleague Larry Izamoje and our great Olympian, Mary Onyali, to sit alongside the Minister on that occasion where he mentioned Poor Funding, Trust Deficit and Infrastructure Deficit as the key problematic areas. These are the same problems that Shehu Dikko will have to start grappling with when he assumes office as Chairman of the National Sports Commission.
Lest I forget, since this article is about accountability, did you ask if members of my committee were paid any allowances for our month-long national assignment? Oh! Do you want a share? (LOL).
Dr. Mumini Alao is a Journalist, Sports Consultant and Arbitrator
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