By Tokunbo Kehinde
For government transactions to earn public trust, they must scale through public scrutiny of transparency and integrity.
Integrity tests are more deserving in transactions overseen by public sector agencies whose core tasks border on the mid-wife of the federal government’s assets through concessions.
The Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) is a government agency established, amongst others, to superintend and regulate public-private partnership (PPP) endeavors of the Federal Government of Nigeria to address Nigeria’s physical infrastructure deficit, which hampers economic development.
The ICRC-shrouded tactics employed in handling the ongoing concession plans for the 52-year-old National Stadium in Surulere, Lagos, have failed both integrity and transparency tests expected of such an agency of government saddled with the scared responsibility of the midwife of concessions of government assets.
The National Stadium, popularly known in the years of yore simply as Surulere Stadium Lagos, currently in its most dilapidated edifice, was built by the General Yakubu Gowon administration in 1972 to host the 2nd All Africa Games a year later.
Unfortunately and regrettably, the ‘usual’ Nigeria’s factors—absence of maintenance associated with Nigerian edifices extended to the National Stadium.
In line with the federal government’s economic paradigm shift to public-private partnerships (PPP) model, the National Stadium was listed as one of the government’s assets for concession . The Ministry of Sports is supervising the ministry for National Stadium. Many steps had been taken in the recent past by the government over the facility, all leaving stakeholders in a state of confusion.
Recently, the Minister of Sports, Senator John Owan Enoh, visited the National Stadium on his assumption of office to announce to the public that the national stadium was being concessioned to a private manager. Enoh told his audience that the process of concession was on before his assumption of office as the Minister.
The Minister’s affirmative declaration to effect that the process for the National Stadium concession had begun in earnest raises more questions.
It’s expedient to ask Enoh and, by extension, the ICRC to tell Nigerians when and which media outlets published Expression of Interest advertisements for the National Stadium concession. Which company won the bid? , What are the antecedents of such a company in terms of sports development? What is the company going to do to change the current narratives of Nigerian sports positively?
Available updates and information on the National Stadium concession show that the whole process of the concession is shrouded in secrecy.
What is in the public domain is that a major part of the stadium will be converted to an estate. This is the reason why billions of naira have exchanged hands yet the stadium is to be given away for peanuts.
What becomes of our athletes?
If this is allowed to succeed, Nigerian sports may degenerate from not winning any medals at the Olympics to not being represented at all at the Olympics.
I indulge the relevant authorities (including the National Assembly), sportsmen and women, sports enthusiasts, and all stakeholders in sports, including the media, to critically analyze this concession idea and process before they hit the final nail on Nigerian sports’ coffin.
This disaster must not be allowed to befall our sports.
*Tokunbo Kehinde writes from Lagos.
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