The Director Manager of the silver label Marathon in Nigeria, Lagos City Marathon, Dr. Yusuf Ali has revealed that Nigeria has only minister of football not Minister of Sports
This was disclosed When he was delivering a lecture on the downturn of Nigeria’s Athletics Fortune at the 2020 Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) Week in Abeokuta on Monday.
The Director said Sports Ministers fund football at the expense of other sports saying that football still struggled.
He said further that primary, secondary and Tertiary institutions sports are dead that National Football teams struggled in CAF competitions .
According to him, “Successive sports ministers in Nigeria treat athletics like a poor distant cousin or as one with leprosy. When journalists call our ministers of sports minister of football I laugh. Yes it is true that sports ministers in Nigeria fund football at the expense of other sports but they don’t actual fund football.
” What they find are major games championships that involves football, this playing on our passion for football and allocating billions of Naira to the sports which are then syphoned.
“It will be more appropriate to call them ministers of games championship instead of Minister of Football. If our sports ministers are minister if football, our football will not in this sorry state. Nigeria is probably the only country in the world renowned for worldwide without a good football league.
“Our National Football teams are struggling, the performances of our football clubs in CAF competitions attest to the sorry state of our league. Football at community, Primary, Secondary and tertiary institutions are dead.”
