Minister of Sports Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi
The Federal Government has commenced moves to concession the two national stadia in Lagos and Abuja to private investors.This move is meant to turn around the fortunes of the national edifices which have so far been abandoned.Minister of Sports, Bolaji Abdullahi, disclosed this to State House correspondents on Wednesday at the end of the weekly Federal Executive Council meeting during which he presented the challenges and achievements of his ministry in 2012.
Abdullahi said his ministry was already working with the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission to come up with a template that would see the two national stadia being operated by the private sector.He said efforts were also underway to hand over the four remaining stadia Nnamdi Azikwe Stadium in Enugu, Tafawa Balewa Stadium in Bauchi, Ahmadu Bello Stadium in Kaduna and Obafemi Awolowo Stadium in Ibadan to the host state governments.
He said President Goodluck Jonathan had approved the request made by the Enugu State Government to take over the Enugu stadium while the application by the Bauchi State Government was still being processed.He said the government was waiting for the remaining state governments to show interests and take over the stadia in their states.He said it had become obvious that the Federal Government could no longer operate the stadia to optimum performance.He said, “The Enugu stadium has been approved by the President for release to the Enugu State government. The Bauchi State government has applied to Mr. President for us to release the Bauchi stadium to the Bauchi State government.
“We hope that other state governments will also take on other stadia because it is no longer possible for the Federal Government to continue to maintain these facilities.
“We will now be left with Lagos and Abuja. You will recall that last year, Mr. President set up an inter-ministerial committee to come up with a sustainable plan for managing these two mega sporting structures.
“Since then, we have been working with the Infrastructure Concession and Regulatory Commission to come up with the framework for concessioning the facilities to the private sector.
“The ICRC has started advertising projects that could come up under concessioning and they told me that the two stadia, Lagos and Abuja, are among the next round of advertising they will do for concessioning.
“The direction we are heading on these two facilities is concessioning to the private sector people that can operate them.”
On the Abuja Stadium, Abdullahi said in the meantime, the Sports Commission has been relocated to the stadium to ensure that it is being used.He said the contract for the pitch was also awarded to Julius Berger.He added that upon completion in June, the national team would not need to travel out of the country for training.Abdullahi admitted that his ministry had not done well in the area of the building of 44 mini stadia as planned, achieving only 24 per cent completion stage.
He said the mini stadia were constituency projects of members of the National Assembly.The minister added that rather than funding 42 sports federation, the ministry has decided to give priority to six sports apart from football.The sports, according to him, are athletics, taekwondo, wrestling, boxing, shooting and weightlifting.He said since it was no longer feasible to fund all federations, the remaining ones would compete for a special fund provided they meet the requirements.
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