Former Minister of Sports, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, in this interview with Success Nwogu, opens up on controversies surrounding his removal as minister and sports administration among others
Sport administration in Nigeria is considered very problematic, how did you cope with minimum crisis?
By its nature, sports thrive on controversy and that is part of what excites people.
That is part of what makes sports interesting. But there is a level of controversy or crisis that becomes debilitating in that it stands in the way of progress. So I think managing the crisis as it were requires a minister to constantly keep alert because in sports, things are not always what they appear to be. People are laughing, smiling and popping Champagne with you but they are actually doing something else when they are alone.
As a leader in that sector, you constantly need to ask yourself ‘what are the interests?’ Because there are always interests. So how do you reconcile these various interests? How do you align these various interests? How do you allow people to pursue their individual aspirations without necessarily undermining the national aspirations? So I think it is your ability to make people see the larger picture while also accepting the legitimacy of their own aspiration that can help in achieving what you want to achieve.
I was wrong several times on several issues and there was no time I was reluctant to admit that I was wrong. I think people also like it when you accept your shortcomings and ask people what they think.
As the sports minister, you clamoured for a national coach for the national team but later on, insisted that a foreign technical manager should be brought in, what made you change your mind?
Let me say that one of the things that people will remember that I did even when I was acting Sports Minister, was that I stopped the NFF from appointing Tom Sinclair, a Belgian, as technical adviser because I was not convinced that the kind of role they were proposing for him could not be played by a Nigerian at that time. I also felt that the process for the recruitment was not appropriate, so I stopped the recruitment. It had nothing to do with whether he was a white or black man or any other colour. No! I felt that certain things had to be done following certain procedures. That was why I stopped it.
Now did I change my position on the issue of foreign technical adviser? I never changed my position on that. I was consistent. Of course I believe that Stephen Keshi did a good job. But at that time and for a very long time we were celebrating AFCON and we failed to realise there was still so much work left to be done. I think that was part of what affected everything. So at the time we were preparing for the World Cup, there were genuine concerns whether the technical crew that we had at that time could take us to the World Cup. I shared some of the concerns that were raised. I said it was too late to start talking of a new coach whether local or foreign. You do not change a team in the middle of a game. That was why we said whoever would be required to join our World Cup technical team had to be such that Coach Keshi could work with.
In fact, I was of the opinion that the NFF should allow Coach Keshi to recruit his own assistant if he needed an assistant. Of course, there were people who felt he needed to get permission to recruit whoever we needed to recruit but I felt that for us to have a united technical crew for the World Cup, we needed to get Keshi as the head coach to be involved in the process of getting whatever technical support or back-up he needed for the World Cup. I think Coach Keshi felt that he did not need such for the World Cup. But there was never a time that I said that I had changed my position and that we should now get a foreign technical adviser.
Keshi’s contract is yet to be renewed. As an ex- Sports minister, do you think he is still fit to continue as the senior national team coach?
That is no longer my business. I do not want to make a comment that will make people come out and say inappropriate things. As an ex-minister of Sports, I am now an elder statesman in sports. There are certain things that I should not get myself involved in.
But I feel that the NFF is in the best position to determine who should coach the national team. I do not think anybody else has the authority or the right to get involved in the issue. If I was still in the office and they sought for my advice, I would have given a piece of it. But I do not think it is within the sphere or responsibility of a minister or any other person for that matter that is not in the
NFF to determine who gets to coach the national team.
The NFF is just one of over 40 federations that we have. People tend to forget that. Because of our national craze, we tend to behave as if the federation of football is the only federation that exists. Does anybody care about who the national coach of volleyball or badminton or tae kwon do or whatever you have is?
Why didn’t you want the national stadium in Lagos to be ceded to Lagos State since other national stadia in other states are managed by the states they are domiciled?
The National Stadium in Surulere is a national monument. It was not like the stadia in Bauchi and Enugu. In the case of Bauchi and Enugu, the state government contributed a lot in putting them in place, so it is not 100 per cent Federal Government owned. That is why we were able to quickly take the decision we took. But the national stadium in Surulere is a national asset with its own idea just like the Arts Theatre in Iganmu, Lagos. But the Federal Government approved at that time that we should go through the process of concessioning which we started before I left. If the process of concessioning had gone the way we wanted and Lagos State Government showed interest, I am sure that Lagos State Government would have been considered because we were looking for value for money. So it was not about ‘Oh it is because it is Lagos State Government or because it is a different political party.’ It was just because the national stadium in Lagos had to be treated differently from may be the one in Bauchi, Enugu or elsewhere.
You were once accused of indirectly plotting to arrogate to yourself the right to administer football and other sports through the League Management Company even when you must have left office, how true is this?
Seriously I do not understand that. The League Management Company was set up to bring the management of football league in tandem with global best practices. Everywhere else in the world that you have a virile league, it has been run as a business and not by people that would say they are going to congress or that they are electing president or electing this or that. No! It is business and it is being run as a company anywhere else in the world. That was the kind of vision that we had before setting up the LMC. My own role was to come up with the vision and policy of the Federal Government for the development of football in Nigeria especially within the context of job creation for the people. It was also my responsibility to communicate this clearly to people who are more competent than myself in making this happen. And that was what I was able to do with the NFF and the NFF agreed with me that that was the direction to go and they went to work and brought all these people together initially with the League Management Committee which eventually translated into the League Management Company.
We have got to a stage in Nigeria where people no longer believe that people can do things because they are genuinely committed and not because there are personal gains for them in it. I think that is what has happened to our psyche. As a Nigerian, if you go anywhere in the world and somebody is nice to you, you begin to wonder what he is looking for. You will say if he is nice to me, there must be something he is looking for. Even at airport, someone helps you to carry your luggage, you will say ‘oh he wants me to give him money.’ But people can be genuinely nice and courteous without expecting any reward.
Would you call your sacking as Sports Minister victimisation?
No! No! I do not feel victimised at all. I remain eternally grateful to President Goodluck Jonathan for giving me the opportunity. In fact, he so much appreciated sports that may be for the first time, a president sat for about 14 hours listening to proceedings during the sports retreat that I organised and which was the first in the country.
What was the build up to your removal as minister?
Close to when I was relieved of my duties, I found myself in difficult situation. A lot of people were pressurising Mr. President to remove me. When you are on the death row and every single night, you hear footsteps, you feel that the hangman is coming for you. Then you just hear the footsteps walk pass yourself, you break down and say ‘oh!” Then you go through that same circle again everyday. When finally the door opens either for you to be hanged or to go, you feel relieved that finally this ordeal is over. That was the circumstance that I did not want to be in, I wish it was averted and I mean it in very general sense. I wish what led to my exit was averted but it did not happen that way. I was committed and wanted to be left alone to do my job.
A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress, Alhaji Kawu Baraje was reported to have said that before you were sacked, you had already written your resignation letter. That he and some other people prevailed on you to hang on. Is that true?
I struggled with a lot of things because there was also the moral question. If you belong to a political family, like I belong, what will you do when your leader leaves that party? I believe and follow Dr. Bukola Saraki, he is my leader. My leader left the Peoples Democratic Party. He never asked me to follow him to APC or new PDP. He never invited me to any of his meetings or whatever he was doing.
He is an honorable gentleman and I will eternally remain grateful to him for that. He never put me under any pressure. He never asked me to follow him. He never asked me what was happening in government. He never asked me anything that would put me in any difficult situation. But I struggled with myself in the sense of the appropriate thing to do. Should I continue to do my job because I was very committed to what I was doing? I believed that we were making progress and we were winning and I was looking forward to the World Cup and the Common Wealth Games. We did so much work preparing for the Commonwealth Games. I was glad that we got the number of gold medals that we got at the Commonwealth Games. That is the outcome of what we did. Unfortunately the heroism of the young men and young women that went to Glasgow was not celebrated the same way we would have celebrated it if it was football. It was quite unfortunate.
I struggled with myself and I thought that I should walk up to Mr. President and say, ‘Mr. President, I thank you so much for the support that you have given me but I think it is becoming morally difficult for me to continue to sit in this place when people or everybody is suspecting that I am kind of doing something that is not appropriate in terms of them alleging that I am not being loyal to you.’
But in the end, of-course, I seek counsel. I did not come to Abuja alone. I sought counsel of people who said, ‘No, do not go. Just hang in there.’ My governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, Saraki, Baraje told me to stay on and continue to do my job as best as I could. They said, ‘the President has not asked you to go and he is the one that appointed you and as long as he has not asked you to go, just do your work.’ Of course that was what I wanted; I wanted to continue to do my work.
At a time, you were quoted as saying that Bukola Saraki was not your leader….
(Cuts in) Who said that? They quoted me or I said so? Where did I say so? What was the occasion? Who was there? What were we doing at that time? You know, people sometimes say things that do not make sense.
You were also accused of being the APC mole in Jonathan’s administration, how true is that?
I was a mole but I led the country to win the Nations Cup after 14 years. Abi? As a mole, I won the Under-17 World Cup, abi? As a mole, I qualified the country for the World Cup, abi? (laughs.)
I think people are just ridiculous. It is all politics. When people want to play politics, they give a dog a bad name in order to hang it. I have said that I was 100 per cent loyal to Mr. President. I swore to an oath to be loyal to the President of Nigeria. Anyone that knows me knows that the day I will no longer be able to guarantee my loyalty, I will not hesitate to resign. When you use the word ‘mole’, is the Federal Government some kind of cult? So what is it that you have to mole about? Is the Federal Government some kind of cult where things are done in the dark corners and in secret and people are not supposed to know? I do not really get it. It is just rubbish talk. The only way they think they will achieve their plan is to tell the President this and that. I wish them good luck.
But you still maintain loyalty to Saraki who defected from PDP to APC?
There is no contradiction in being loyal to the President and being loyal to Saraki. I was an editor with ThisDay Newspaper in 2003 when Dr. Saraki won the election to become governor of Kwara State. Then he appointed me to be his Special Assistant. Two years later he appointed me to be his Special Adviser. Again two years later, he made me Commissioner for Education and I remained there for four years until 2011 when the government ended. In 2011, he forwarded my name which allowed Mr. President to nominate me as his minister.
If there are issues which I am not privy to between these two big men, how is that my problem? But in all honesty, I tried to see whether I could play any role in mediating or reconciling them. I remember a couple of times I went to see people could speak with Mr. President so that I could get Dr. Bukola Saraki to go and see him. I was not saying that to protect myself. I was saying it because I believed that the issues that were happening were not beyond reconciliation. But there were people who were also interested and wanted to capitalise on what was happening between them at that time to alienate this person or that person. So those people were not ready to allow that kind of reconciliation to happen.
I made a commitment that as a serving minister, I would remain totally loyal to Mr President and I remained 100 per cent loyal to him. For me, what is loyalty? The fact that I was committed to getting the job done just as he asked me to do. I was 100 per cent loyal to him. I can say with all sense of humility that I brought glory to Mr. President and I brought glory to Nigeria with the work I did as minister.
All this question of divided loyalty, I do not know where it is coming from. I never had divided loyalty, my loyalty was very clear.
We hear you now have governorship ambitions…
I hope and believe that one day I can be Governor of Kwara State. I believe I have the right experience, exposure, education and right vision. I believe that one day, I can be Governor of Kwara State.
Do you think it will happen in 2015?
I do not know. I am a member of a political group and I am a loyal member of that group so it is what the peoplesay that will determine what happens to me. Whether in 2015, 2019 or 2023, I do not know. What I know is that I would love to be Governor of Kwara because I believe that I have things to contribute. But when it will be, I do not know. That will depend on what the leadership of my political group decides.
We learnt you defected to APC just because you were sacked as a Sports Minister
Not at all! I went to APC because that is where my political family is. Second, before I joined APC, I was a card carrying member of PDP but I was not really politically active like that. I must make that clear. Some people were harassing me to do this or that at the time that I was still in office. But I think when you beat someone, you will expect that person to cry. When I left office, I consulted with
my family, and I decided that I would be more active politically. Apart from the obvious fact that the political group that I belong to is now in APC, you will also agree with me that all politics is local.
I would not have been in PDP and stay in Abuja doing PDP or join APC and stay in Abuja doing APC. I looked at PDP in Kwara and I did not find accommodation for myself in that setting. There are too many big men and big women who are jostling for space. I like order and clearly defined line of authority. I like predictability and a well- organised group. That makes APC more attractive to me than PDP apart from the obvious fact that my leader and mentor, Saraki, also belongs there. If I did not feel that APC provided the right alternative for me, I would probably stay in the house. The option that PDP provided in Kwara State was not conducive for the kind of engagement that I was interested in.
The Kwara State PDP reportedly said you had even moved to APC long before it was made public. They reportedly claimed that you defected to APC since February 2014.
Let them prove that. There is party register, let them prove it. I do not care what they say. What else do they want? They wanted to get me out so that they can take the position as the minister and they have achieved it. So why don’t they just leave me alone? I said I was not a politician, they made noise from here to Maiduguri, that I said that I was not a politician. Now I have said that I am a politician, they are still crying. What do they want?
You were once a commissioner for education in your state, would you say you really achieved anything in that sector given the fact that you recently complained about the state of the education sector in Nigeria?
I was commissioner, yes! And I said that my period as Commissioner for Education was an exciting period in my public service career. It is one sector that I remain very passionate about. I believe very strongly that Nigeria is not going to make any progress unless we are able to deal with education. My argument has always been that the situation that we have found ourselves in Nigeria where parents got better education than their childrennot natural; where the quality of education that the child gets depends on whether the parents are rich or not. I believe that as government, we should create a condition that allows every child to have the opportunity to have quality education regardless of the reality of their births or the condition of their upbringing. That requires a lot of investments in financial, quality and strategy terms.
For me what I tried to do under my governor at that time, Saraki, was to bring about a holistic step change in the way we administer the education sector in the state.
Kwara PDP also says that your days as a commissioner was filled with ‘draconian polices’, how do you react to that allegation?
What do they mean by draconian policies? Are they saying that making sure that people received their salaries without hassles is a draconian policy? Are they saying that ensuring quality of education and fighting examination malpractice are draconian? So they are saying that if they were made commissioner of Education, they would encourage examination malpractices, truancy of teachers, indiscipline and other vices.
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President Jonathan was forced to sack me – Bolaji Abdullahi, Ex Sports Minister
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