Home-based players should be given more opportunities to play – Baba-Ali

Alhaji Suleiman Baba-Ali was the managing director/chief executive officer of Team Nigeria Trust Fund. He is currently vying to occupy the Kogi State Government House as governor. He spoke with our correspondent, CHRIS ONOKPEGU on so many issues including his spell at Team Nigeria Trust Fund. Excerpts:

Can you briefly tell us your achievements at Team Nigeria Trust Fund?

I was the pioneer managing director/chief executive of Team Nigeria Trust Fund. We did quite a lot during my short stint. I was there for 21 months and we were able to raise funds for Nigerian athletes for the All Africa Games in Algiers in 2007. We were also able to raise money to train the athletes like the Grace Daniels, who was the then badminton champion, and we were able to fund her training to Germany for five to six months. At a point also, we were coordinating for Olusoji Fasuba, who was then Nigerian and African’s fastest man. We also provided the kits from the funds that we raised for the athletes.

Due to the normal delay for the release of funds by the federal government for the Nigerian contingent for international competitions, the funding for the All African Games for Nigerian athletes in Algiers, the fund from the National Sports Commission, NSC was released just a week before the Games. Under such circumstance, there is no magic that anyone could have expected the NSC to done in respect of getting kits and other arrangements in place.

Suleiman Baba-Ali

So Team Nigeria Trust Fund came in handy at that time, about a week to the Games, we provided the kits with supports from some banks, NNPC and some couples of other institutions. The kits that the Nigeria athletes worn arrived in Algiers, in order to avoid a situation whereby the athletes will put on their private clothes or normal mufti, we had the Tee-shirts, the round ‘Bola’ caps with Team Nigeria written all over them and a couple of kits that they needed to use. We also started preparation for Beijing Olympic before I left office. So within the short period the Trust Fund existed, we achieved quite a lot and also for the first time, we gave winning bonuses for gold, silver and bronze medalists.

The then chairman, late Chief Molade Okoya-Thomas with the board members, the officials of the NSC made of Team Nigeria Trust Fund, at the end of each event, once you win a gold, the national anthem is sang, as you are stepping out, we gave them a cheque not the issue of making promises, there in Algiers and the athletes were happy. We also planned something bigger for Beijing Olympic but unfortunately I left seven months before the Games.

Are you not worried that the Team Nigeria Trust Fund has gone underground since you left?

The truth of the matter is that when I was there, it was a lot of struggle to get the Trust Fund going but the concept of the Team Nigeria Trust Fund will never work if you don’t have the buy-in of sports administrators at the National Sports Commission. They concept is complement and support them using the normal Public Private Partnership, PPP but certain people saw it as a way of reducing government funding and creating problem here and there; and actually didn’t buy the idea.

And also we had the issues of property right. You talk about the Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, and all other federations, you must first give the right to Team Nigeria to be able to market them, a situation whereby NFF has its own marketing department, the Athletics federation and others have their own rights, and all we were left with that time was to sell international competitions of the Nigerian team. It was difficult to sell the activities of the individual federation except the federation requires the assistance, most often than that, we had a situation whereby the federations have their own marketers.

So were now left with the West African Games, the All African Games, the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics. Even with the Olympics Games, we had issues even though we had the president of the Nigeria Olympic Committee, NOC as a member of the board but we had issues, we had serious issues until we now have to fight our ways unfortunately I left before the Beijing Olympics, then I insisted we were not selling the Olympics Games but Nigeria’s participation in the Olympics Games.

We were told we have to get rights from the International Olympic Committee, IOC before we could sell the Olympics, without that we have no right to sell the Olympics. I even remember when we did a brochure for the Olympic, the IOC said we should remove the symbol of the Olympic Games from it. So for Team Nigeria Trust Fund to work, it must be done properly and given its own right not that you are at the mercy of the federations or even international competitions. The All Africa Games didn’t challenge us more like the Olympic Games. So the idea of the Team Nigeria Trust Fund was an excellent idea that would have helped the sports in the country.

You are a strong member of the All Progressives Congress, APC, can you hint us some of the programmes you have for sports?

Firstly, if you listen to the presidential candidate of the APC, Muhammad Buhari, he has said that the bane and inefficiency of development in the country is corruption; and Nigerian sports is not different with all its corruption and the first thing we are going to do is to clean the system of corruption. Once the issue of corruption in the Nigerian society is taken care or reduced drastically, I believe that our sports will achieve a lot. It is a big problem for Nigerian society and Nigerian sports.  So we are coming up to deal with the issue of corruption first and also we have issue with dealing with grassroot school sports; grassroot sports at community level to help development of sports and there will be sustained training. The issue of training for event with about two or three months to competitions will not happen again. We will have four years to plan for every competition especially the Olympics; the training and preparation for the next world cup or Olympics begins immediately after the last one.

Can you briefly talk on Stephen Keshi’s contract eventhough he has been sacked?

I haven’t seen the contract but if I were Keshi, I will not even take the job in the first place and the reason is this, there had been too many problems between Keshi and the administrators and it is clear for anyone who cares to listen that there are many interests that are not comfortable having Keshi as the coach of the Super Eagles. So no matter how juicy or stupid the contract may look, the moment he took it, it will continue to create problems for him. Remember, there have been a lot of arguments and disagreements in the past. I want to reiterate that if I were Keshi, I will not take the job because there are many issues concerning how he was fired and the President bringing him back, the matter has been lingering on and it is obvious that the NFF does not want to see him as a coach, no matter how juicy the contract is, I bet you within the next six months to 12 months, you will hear again that Keshi is having problem. It is either they are frustrating him or he is not being provided with the support he needs to succeed. Once the team is losing, nobody wants to know, all what they will say is that the team is not doing well, so if I were Keshi’s adviser, I would have told him not to take the job. At least not with the current regime of the NFF, he may come back in the next two, three years down the line but for now, I will tell him to walk away.

Lastly, you talked about commencing preparation on time immediately when a tournament or competition ends, looking at the Super Eagles, do you think we need to rebuild and is there any player that you think should be left behind?

Part of the success of Keshi, whether we want to admit it or not, is his ability to bring in the local players from the league and we must give it to him. One of the boys gave us the Nations Cup in South Africa. Gone are the days when the foreign players are only given the chance to play, we were not helping our local players, so we must give that to Keshi. I believe we have so many players in our local league and if given the chance, like three years to the next World Cup, they should be able to perform not the three months we used to prepare for tournaments. Like Sunday Mba and a couple of others, if put together with some of the international stars, and we build confidence in the boys, I believe we will surpass our past records at the next World Cup.