MOST SPORTS MINISTERS ARE POLITICIANS- ALHASSAN YAKMUT
Having worked under more than 12 sports ministers, serving as special assistant to four of them, personal assistant to two, and as an independent adviser to about six of them, Alhassan Yakmut qualifies as the unsung hero of Nigerian sports.
From the Nigeria Premier League (NPL) to the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), where he was drafted to troubleshoot, the director, National Sports Federation and Elite Athletes is now a crisis manager, a fact he admitted while fielding questions from Daily Sunsports in Abuja recent.
He disclosed: 'I once visited the Glass House eight times to prevent a full-blown crisis.'
He also spoke on his pains and gains for serving more than 12 sports ministers, the way forward in the legal tussles against the NFF and NPL, the Super Eagles, Coach Siasia, and why he avoided taking coaching as career. Excerpts:
Nigerian Sports as a brand
Nigerian Sports is a big brand, but a raw brand that needs to be polished and serviced. I'm happy that in the last two years, the approach to sports management in the National Sports Commission (NSC) is from the contemporary perspectives of branding. With the level of sporting events in Nigeria, we have passed the stage of the stated criteria for vision 20:20:20, because we are already rated very high in some of the sports in the world.
The NSC has put machinery in place to nurture young talents in the country. But it seems the schools have since gone back to the ancient approach to human development, where mental development is given priority than the physical. We are going back to the period of asceticism and scholasticism, where people lay emphasis on scholarship and physical affairs at the expense of spiritual affairs.
Call to scrap National Sports Festival
The National Sports Festival (NSF) cannot lose its value, though we can transform it. NSF was considered as a talent hunt programme and a technical ceremony for the confirmation of elite athletes. In the beginning, there were intermediate and senior categories, but it is no longer like that. Instead, every athlete to the event now competes on the same platform.
The misgiving that the glory and purpose of NSF have been lost is expected, but what we should look into is making it an entirely grassroots affair and strictly for talents from the age of 18 and below. We can also decide to start a national Olympics for the best available to compete for honours.
It would be wrong to make sweeping statement that the value of the NSF has been eroded. I think it is a philosophy with some level of deficiency. It is partially incorrect to say that we did not utilise all the talents the country discovered at past festivals. But in Kaduna, for example, the discovered talents were over-aged. A 28-year old athlete cannot be a new discovery. It is wrong to discover athletes at that age.
Medal target at All African Games
Our target is to surpass our past performances. We are at the level of readjusting our strategy based on the number of sports we are participating in. We will be able to conveniently set medals' target at the end of our camping. But don't forget that some sports, which are our areas of strength, have been dropped.
NPL crisis
I have been posted to the NPL twice, and on those occasions, I found out that the NPL is dynamic. It is the highest exhibition of the local content of the Nigerian football artistry, though with visible and invisible distractions. The distractions are so colossal that the objective of making NPL an autonomous entity is difficult to achieve.
We must learn to separate conflict of interest from conflict of purpose. Ninety per cent of the NPL crisis, both past and present revolve around personality issues.
They forget that since football is a team game, the spectatorship and management should also be a team game. Where it fails, there will be perpetual crisis as we have it now. Another predicament facing the league is that 100 per cent of the clubs in the country are government owned. Since there is no place for commerce and business relationship in the structure, it is difficult for remuneration to be consistent.
Yakmut's achievement at NPL
The first time I managed the body, we were able to purify the administrative style, educating the officiating officials to be above board. The second journey was a huge challenge because by then politics has overtaken all the aspects of our football. Even the technical aspect now is polluted. Until we sieve out those pollutants, the way forward will still be very far.
My suggestion, however, is that officials of NPL should be given free hands to operate if we want to meet the target of making impact at continental championships. NPL is an economically viable business.
Also, I can say that Nigerian referees changed their attitude during my tenure when they realised that none of them was invited for continental and international matches. They realised that they were fast becoming domestic officials even when football has passed that level.
Problem with Nigerian coaches
The problem with our coaches is that not up to four of them apply scientific knowledge in doing their job. Many of them go to the pitch without undergoing any training programme.
Government and training of coaches
There is no place for government in football apart from the provision of statutory functions, which have to do with the security of the country's immigration, customs and the law of the land. Government does not determine the rules of the game and the technical equipment for coaches. Why should government augment when coaching is a product and brand that should sell itself?
Football managers and officials in the country should emulate others in other countries. There is no country, where football stakeholders have gone to court on local content in the last two years like Nigeria. There are many football cases in the regular courts in this country. If we continue this way, we will run into further crisis. We are already feeling the effect because the harvest of talents is now very low. With our population, we should be discovering many star players every year. Our turnover should be 10 star players in the class of Austin Okocha.
We can build some percentage of our economy on the footballers, as they do in Brazil. We have many athletes, but we are not turning them out.
Glass House of corruption
I have worked in the Glass House and I can tell you that the problem there is the inability of the political and administrative authorities to adapt to government procedures. If their subvention comes from government, they must follow the due process of procurement and due process of deployment of funds. They should not just spend money without the approval of the authorities. How can they raise alarm of interference when they travel with government passport? What I will advice them is to look into the statute regulating their establishment.
When I took over the league in October 2007, there was a very unhealthy rivalry between the NPL and the federation. I became a shuttle diplomat between them. The only painful thing was that throughout my tenure, neither the chairman nor the secretary of the federation visited the NPL secretariat. There was a day I visited the Glass House eight times to ensure we don't have a full-blown crisis. I ensured that the 90 minutes on the pitch was not compromised because we have social contract with the Nigerian youths. There must always be time for truce. I spoke to Davidson Owumi around 1am to impress it on him to allow the technical aspect of the league to continue, while he settles the political differences.
People insinuating that I left the league the way I met it is not being fair to me. There were some levels of stability and sanity. I was hard on anybody who violated the rule. In fact, I challenge anybody with evidence where I compromised during my tenure to come forward. I can swear with the Koran to prove my innocence.
The crisis among the NSC, NPL and NFF
The Sports Ministry and National Sports Commission (NSC) don't have any rift with the NFF because it is only a recalcitrant son that is always at loggerhead with the father. The NSC cannot stoop low to quarrel with the NFF. I still recall when I was directed to query NFF for travelling to US for a botched match. I gave the query, not because I'm Alhassan, but because the NSC must exercise an oversight function over the NFF. I would be the last person not to champion the course of the commission.
Legal tussles against NFF
If not for the intervention of the NSC and the National Assembly, we would not have been playing football in Nigeria today. In order to resolve this issue, we advice that they should go back to the statutory functions to realise that there must be devolution of powers and duties between the NPL and the federation.
Only footballers brand Nigeria abroad
I'm not really worried because we are bridging the gap between the footballers and athletes, but the media have refused to balance their reportage across other sports. Our mono sports culture is the pandemic problem, but it could be stemmed as soon as our grassroots programmes click. At the time I was playing volleyball, people were paying gate fees in Kano to come and watch us. At the time basketball was at its peak, we were rated the best in Africa. It was the same in athletics when we ruled the sprint world.
We have the right leadership to get our acts right. But the return of the glorious days must undergo its incubation period, which I think will normally take less than four years of consistent preparation.
Impression about Coach Samson Siasia
Siasia is one person I have followed closely from his playing days to his transmutation to coaching. I was among those that encouraged Siasia, Austin Eguavoen, Daniel Amokachi and Stephen Keshi to go into coaching. I'm impressed with their performances. Technically, Siasia is the new sensation now, and as a man with very high ego, he will not compromise quality.
Super Eagles
The national team is a technical brand in the making. So far, I have no reasons to doubt that, because having watched their couple of matches in the recent time, I can see the gradual return of the days of our first appearance at the World Cup. Then, we took the world by surprise and the Eagles of today are no longer looking like underdogs. Very soon we will stop fumbling and wobbling.
Why an administrator instead of a coach?
It was a deliberate personal decision. I refused to go into coaching because I saw the terrain and found out that it was easier to avoid hypertension in administration than in coaching. All the necessary materials required to make one a successful coach might not be available at the right time. So, I chickened out of coaching and did my Masters in Sports Administration in 1990 at the University of Ife. That was after I had studied Physical and Health Education at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Greatest and darkest moments
My greatest moment was in 1982, when I helped my school, ABU, Zaria to stop the then University of Ife from winning their consecutive 12th volleyball gold medal at NUGA. Internationally, it was the year Kano Superstars Volleyball team beat Zamalek of Egypt in its own hall in Cairo. As an administrator, it was when, as a young man, I turned sports around in terms of performance and provision of equipment as a sole administrator of Plateau State Council in 1993.
My darkest moment in sporting career was when one minister thought I was insincere and even said it publicly. I did not challenge him because of respect, but a time of reckoning came when hostile reactions greeted his policy statement on NPL crisis without my advice. It jolted him that he had to call me. I told him that the decision to relegate Bayelsa United was purely technical, not political.
Regrets
My regret is that there is no decent sports equipment in Nigerian secondary schools. There are no decent sports facilities up to the point that athletes still run barefooted like we did it many years ago, yet I don't have powers to change the situation.
Surviving many sports ministers
It was a chemistry of experience because the mental attributes of those ministers were never the same. I was privileged to be the special assistant to four ministers, personal assistant to two, and independent adviser to about six of them. But each time a non-professional comes, as we are polishing him to become expert, he would be removed or redeployed. As at the last count, between 1966 till date, we have had about 30-something sports ministers.
Best sports minister
It's very difficult to say which among the ministers was the best because none of them lasted long enough to be assessed properly. But they have individual qualities beyond the imagination of public observers. There's none you would say was completely useless. There was none who did not want to change the fortunes of Nigerian sports. The area I suffered in silence was that almost all of them were politicians and not technocrats. And poor me, I had no powers to change it.