Following the recent Supreme Court judgment on local government autonomy, a sports stakeholder and entrepreneur, Hon. Ahmed Shuaibu Gara-Gombe, has urged the Federal government to direct all sports federations to establish council chapters in the 774 local government areas to drive sports development across the country.
He also recommended that should any federation fail to do so within six or eight months, such federation must forfeit federal government grants, so that sports development can go to the grassroots.
Gara-Gombe said with full independence of local government areas now entrenched and validated in the constitution, it has become absolutely necessary to take sports development seriously at the local government areas level where it ought to have started to be driven by the proposed council chapters.
Speaking to journalists at the weekend, he said sports federations should start organizing competitions at the local government and even at states levels, stressing that presently, they don’t as they only believe in camping for qualifiers.
His words: “If you take the Athletic Federation of Nigeria (AFN) for instance, they don’t have grassroots Competitions and we have money in World Athletics (WA) meant for grassroots Competitions and Athletics development, they can’t access it owing to their insincerity and lack of transparency.
“Also, if you check the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) as it is today, one of their contentious part is lack of good governance and respect for the rule of Law, the status provides that every local government should have Councils but because they are been manipulated by State government and local governments in the past, such rules are totally ignored.
“For instance, a Sports Officer of a LG would claim to be the Chairman of his football Council, someone who cannot tell you how many players that sit on the reserve bench during a football match as we have it in Gombe State.”
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Speaking further he said: “This is the time we should rise and speak with one voice. Let us to go back to the local government and develop sports.”
Gara-Gombe, a former Chairman of Gombe United Football Club and current director of the Gombe State Athletics Association, pointed out that as the local councils would be getting their grants directly from the Federal Ministry of Sports, it behooves them to use the funds to work for sports development in villages and communities around their domains.
He stated that globally, countries started sports development and talents’ hunt from their local council chapters and not at the top as prevalent in Nigeria today.
“Primary and secondary schools should have open spaces for sports activities. This is the time to build sports facilities by Local government Councils to grow Nigeria’s Sports from the grassroots
“I was elated by the Supreme Court judgment making the local government Autonomy very Crystal clear. I believe the LG independence would engender sports development to pass through all local Councils. Sports chapters at the local Council level, when fully established, would take care of things previously neglected by the State and Local governments,” he stressed.
