The Man in the Arena

The Sports Minister, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, on 2013 victories, Stephen Keshi, sports politics and public life

 Interview by Waziri Adio and Joshua Ocheja

 

Prologue by Simon Kolawole

Photography by Hakeem Salaam

 It's a goal! That's all your fans want to hear. Just score goals and make us happy. In that case, the Minister of Sports, Mallam Abdul-Ganiyu Bolaji Abdullahi, can be said to have delivered the goods. He is easily one of the most accomplished sports ministers in Nigeria's history. Under his watch, Nigeria has won the Africa Cup of Nations and the Under-17 World Cup, as well as qualified for the 2014 World Cup - all in one year. There is also the enviable collection of medals in African Athletics Championships, and the feat of multi-talented athlete Blessing Okagbare, who restored Nigeria's name to the medals table at the World Athletics Championship after the country's 13-year disappearing act. It's not just a goal - it's goals. But, in sport, it is not that simple. Who is responsible for the medals and trophies? The athletes? The coaches? The administrators? The fans? The media?

It is a bit complicated. The conventional wisdom in Nigeria is: "I won, we drew, you lost". If there is a medal or trophy on the table, the athletes and the coaches usually take the glory. Sometimes, it is attributed to sheer luck. When the trophy cabinet is empty, it is the administrators, stupid! They are the ones who prepared the team shabbily; they are the ones who delayed the payment of allowances; they are the ones who hired the wrong coaches; they are the ones who invited the wrong players to camp; and so on and so forth. When the team achieves, well, it may have nothing to do with those factors again. It is pure luck. We say the teams achieved in spite of "inept administration". This is the kind of situation public officers often find themselves. In sport, especially. The players and the coaches take all the praise ("I won"). Indifference is for all to share ("we drew"). Failure belongs to the administrators ("you lost").

Winning or losing, though, could be seen as a collective endeavour. There is a place for a goalkeeper, a defender, a midfielder and a striker on the field of football. And there are coaches barking orders from the pitch side. The administrators are usually not in the picture. And the assumption is that they do next to nothing, apart from the less demanding task of sitting in air-conditioned offices and flying around the world in search of estacodes and other varieties of comfort. For the greater part, then, they are on the defensive, always trying to get themselves out of a hole. Their toils are invisible. Their mistakes are televised. And you can see that this morning on the training pitch at the National Stadium, Abuja, where Mallam Abdullahi is playing some practice football with his staff. He is on the defensive - sorry, in the defence - and trying to prevent his side from conceding goals. He takes the corners, trying to create opportunities for others to score and shine. And, goodness, he takes and misses a penalty - and that is so glaring for everyone to see. Damn!

Of course, his staff didn't give him the kind of hard tackling you see in real life. He is a minister, after all, and you don't want to break his leg and make the wrong headlines the following day. But Abdullahi should have little complaint about hard tackles. He made his name as a merciless newspaper columnist, a critic who called a spade a spade, even when he could have mercifully said it looked like a spade. He is at the other side now, and the realities are not the same, even if related. Hear him on the convergence between journalism and public administration and his transition from one side to the other: "It was almost seamless because journalism and public service are organically connected. In journalism, you write and think and talk about what needs to be done. Sometimes you take the liberty of proffering solutions. In public sector, you have the additional responsibility of not just suggesting solutions but of actually making the solution happen. So I find it directly connected and I actually think journalism is a good training ground for public service."

During the interview, he keeps referring to the conflict between what we see and what we don't see. We can see the medals, but the methods are not obvious. We can hold the trophy, not the thinking. The 100 metres race takes a few seconds to complete, but the preparation couldn't have been in seconds. The football captain holds the trophy after a two-week tournament, but two weeks is nothing in the whole calendar. In this engaging interview, Abdullahi discusses the dynamics of being a man in the arena,  his reform agenda and records, his leadership approach, and related issues. Below find excerpts. 

2012 is regarded as the worst year in our recent sporting history. How did we get there and how do we ensure that we don’t go back there again?

 

The definitive sporting event for 2012 was the London Summer Olympics, and of course we came back with no medals at all. Looking back, it is not surprising that we got the kind of result that we got in London because up till that point we had a mind-set of just attending competitions rather than of developing a programme that would realistically deliver results. There was no policy guideline that said this is how we discover athletes, this is how we groom them, and this is how we prepare them for competitions. The basic building blocks for achieving result did not exist at all. The athletes were just relying on chance and their devices. There was also a high level of distrust between the National Sports Commission and the sports federations.

 The dismal outing forced us to look at the way we run sports in the country. We were lucky we have a President Goodluck Jonathan that understood the significance of sports and he immediately convened a presidential retreat. It was the first time ever that sports will be getting that level of attention at the highest level of political authority in Nigeria. The President sat through the 14 hours of the retreat and we came up with a report which became my responsibility to implement. One of the things we found was that we have to bring greater efficiency into the management of the various sports federations and the management of resources that go to them. Two, we have to fund sports well and more efficiently. And three, we have to strengthen grassroots sports development and create a broader pipeline to process athletes for higher performance. Since the retreat, we have been putting in place a robust framework for achieving all these.

 There is this widespread belief that our country was just unlucky in 2012 and just got lucky in 2013…

 Yes, you need a bit of luck in sports. But I don’t think it will be fair to ascribe everything to luck. What we do when we ascribe things to luck is that we close the space for responsibility and accountability. I can tell you strongly that it is not about luck. It is about leadership because the kind of bargaining that you do every day with all the various actors across a broad space goes a long way to determine the kind of result you get. The choices you make sitting in your office can determine what happens when athletes go into the field. The decision you took six months earlier, the relationship you were able to build six months earlier can determine what happens in those 10 seconds that you see an athlete run on the field. So to ascribe all these to mere luck is to do injustice to the knowledge that we can learn from how these things were done.

 The success in sports in 2013 started with AFCON and everybody was happy that Nigeria won after 19 years. But there were also stories. There was this particular story that the NFF officials bought their tickets because they didn’t expect that Nigeria could defeat Ivory Coast in the quarter-final match…

 

Everyone that knows anything about international sports competition knows that the issue of ticketing, just like accommodation, is handled by the tournament organisers. When you go to the Africa Cup of Nations, your ticket to even leave your country is bought by CAF. Your ticket to return to your country is bought by CAF. Once you cross the group stage, you all have your bookings ready. And that is why you see that when you lose a game today by the next day you are out of the country. The tickets for all the players on the Nigerian side and the Ivoirians too had already been booked before that game so that CAF would not continue to incur accommodation expenses after the team had lost out in the competition. If they have their way, the moment you lose they will march you from the stadium to the airport. So that is the way it is.

 This rumour is quite unfortunate because from day one I was in South Africa and I knew what was going on. You remember that the first three matches we played weren’t particularly very good so we were afraid of crashing out very early in the competition. I called the president of the football federation and I read the riot act to him. NFF officials in turn put pressure on the coaches. Now the question is how did they do it? So if individuals in the federation had done it in a way that suggested that ‘oh they don’t believe in the coaches,’ that is a different ball game entirely.

 

Many Nigerians believe that despite the fact that Keshi is one of our most successful coaches, whether indigenous or foreign, he has not been well treated. Why is it that you guys don’t have any respect for him? Is it because he is a Nigerian?

You see, I have a major credential when the issue of Nigerian or non-Nigerian coach comes up. And my credential is that one of the first actions that I took as minister was to stop the hiring of Tom Saintfiet as technical director for Nigeria. The reason I did it was that I wasn’t convinced that there was no Nigerian that could do that job. So the issue of not respecting Keshi because he is a Nigerian does not arise.

The issue of him not being paid is the latest and it’s quite unfortunate. Every labourer deserves his wages. Keshi deserves to be paid. I got to know of this issue on the pages of newspapers. And talking about respect, that does not show respect. But after I read it and relying on newspaper reports, I issued a query to the NFF asking them to explain why Keshi and the other national coaches were being owed. They said they are cash-strapped. Well, I think the NFF can do a lot better not only in fund generation, but also in fund management. If they had been more creative in the way they generate and manage funds, they probably would not be in the kind of financial situation that they are. But the truth is that they are in a financial mess and we have to deal with that. So when they replied that they had financial problems, the first thing was to find way to solve the issue of coaches’ salaries and I can tell you that I wrote to President Jonathan asking for a bailout.

Is it true that you wanted to hire Rijkaard while AFCON was going on?

There is no truth to that. Even a retarded fellow will tell you that even if you are going to hire a coach, you don’t do that in the middle of a competition. At least you wait for the competition to be over.

 What are your expectations for Nigeria at the World Cup and the next Olympics? And what are the things that have been put in pace to make sure that those expectations are met? 

I am confident that 2014 is going to be a great year for sports. I am confident that the Super Eagles can do very well at the World Cup if we are able to work very hard and focus on what we need to do between now and then. Other African countries have gotten to the quarter finals before, so I don’t think quarter finals should be enough for us. I think we should target semi-finals and I think it’s realistic. Of course it’s a lot of work and it’s not going to happen because we wish it. We have a good team, we have a good technical support for them, and we believe we can go far if we keep our eyes on the ball.

 

 The Commonwealth Games is also in 2014. We believe we can go far. We want to win it if possible. That’s our target. The athletes are already in camp and this is the first time we have had this stretch of preparations for almost a year before the tournament. These are part of the changes we have brought into the management of elite sports. We have already built an athletes’ hostel in the stadium and what that means is that athletes can camp within the stadium and train within the stadium. We don’t have to take them outside where they will be distracted. 

We are also building a high performance centre that will be for strength conditioning, sports physiology, sports medicine and all that. This has never happened in the whole of West Africa. I am confident that by the end of January 2014 this centre will take off. We have hired a high performance director for athletics. We are working with the Cubans to give us a coach in boxing and we have already signed an agreement. We are working with the Korean embassy to give us coaches for taekwondo and we have already signed the agreement. These are the support systems that were missing. I believe that the fact that we have all these critical inputs in place should have a bearing on our performances in competitions.

What will you consider your key achievements since you came to the Ministry of Sports? 

The obvious ones are that under my watch, we won the Africa Cup of Nation for 2013, we won the FIFA Under-17 World Cup and we qualified for the World Cup. Also under my watch, we are the only country ever in Africa to simultaneously hold the championship records for senior athletics, junior athletics and youth athletics. But for me what I will consider to be my biggest achievement is that under my watch we have been able to build a system that is pre-designed to deliver results: a system that will ensure that regardless of who is in charge, results can be achieved and things can be done the way they should be done.

The Commonwealth Games is in August next year. As I said before, the athletes that will take part in that competition are already in camp. This is the first time that will happen. We are also building a high performance system that will manage the science of preparing athletes for competitions.  For the first time we now have a national high performance director to develop a programme that can be implemented over a period of time that will start from discovering athletes to developing their talents and preparing them for podium success.

The science of sports today will tell you that for you to achieve podium success at global level you must have at least 10,000 hours of preparation. That is like two and half hours every day for 10 years. So what it means is that athletes have to be discovered very early, probably at the age of 9 or 10 and be put through a programme that deliberately looks at their nutrition, physiology, physiotherapy, conditioning and exposure. All these have to be put together in a programme. That is what makes the high performance system, which we have never had.

For example, what was the programme that we used that made Chioma Ajunwa win the gold in long jump at the Atlanta Olympics? There was none. I would love to see that programme and see how we can replicate it. But there was none. So until we are able to get to a level where we can say this is the programme that we used, this is the process that we have put in place and this is the template, then we have not got to where we ought to be. For me, I want to be remembered as the minister who put these basic frameworks in place and who initiated a system that can be built upon.

What did you do to straighten out the football federation and the local league?

When I became minister, there were about 25 court cases against the NFF. It was so bad that I heard that when we went to the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, as the Nigerian contingent was arriving, another contingent was also arriving with a different objective, which was to ensure that the federation at that time failed. That was the atmosphere of sheer anarchy that I found as minister and it was clear to me that we were not going to get anywhere until we sorted that out. 

What I did was to set about rebuilding trust between the NSC and the NFF by making the federation realise that ‘yes you have had this relationship with the commission over the years but this is a new man in charge. I am not going to take your sides, but I am not going to be against you. I will deal with everyone fairly.’ I had to seek the assistance of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation to make everyone realise that I was implementing a brief that goes as high as possible. We were able to clear all the court cases and we were able to improve relationships amongst the various organs that are vital to moving forward.

We have also done a lot to straighten out our local league. When I became minister, the Nigerian Premier League had become so bad that there was a big tussle over title sponsorship and league managers were asking clubs to pay the allowances of referees. And when you ask clubs to pay allowances of referees, of course the outcome is very clear. So the league was in such disrepute that anything could happen. Matches were going on for two hours until the preferred team won; people were playing matches in darkness; people were throwing balls into the net to claim a goal.

Now we have a limited liability company, headed by Hon. Nduka Irabor, in charge of our league. I can tell you that that is one achievement that I am most proud of and within one year, the same league that could not get a title sponsorship was able to sign a deal of N550 million title rights. That isn’t much, but it is better than nothing. The same league that could not pay its own referees got an investment of $34 million in broadcast rights. That is a major achievement.

Talking about money, what have you put in place to ensure sustainable funding for sports in the country?

We have been working with the office of the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance and GTBank to come up with a framework for a funding system that is not tied to the vagaries of the annual budget. What we have proposed is a national high performance sports fund which will be used solely to manage high performance sports and of course the high performance sports in Nigeria are football, athletics, boxing, wrestling and taekwondo. The rest will now be funded by sporting activities fund that normally comes from the budget.

How do you get money into the high performance sports fund?

The fund will be made up of money that comes in for the elite sports, money from budget, money from corporate sponsorship, and money from lottery. We want a percentage of the money from lottery to be dedicated to elite sports. That is part of the negotiation that is on-going with the office of the Coordinating Minister for the Economy. She has been very supportive and keen. We have written to the President and he is happy about it. What is remaining is to tidy up the framework. And by the time we are through, the issue of we are late in preparing for a major competition because the budget has not been approved or because there is no budgetary allocation will not arise.

Being in the sports sector is seen as partaking in a contact sport. How have you been able to survive all the vicious tackles that go with the terrain?

This is a sector with probably 160 million experts and with all of them thinking the only person who has no clue about what needs to be done is the person who has the job. Also, it is a tough sector because you cannot achieve sustainable result without being reform-minded. And being a reformist means that you are preoccupied with bringing about change in the way things are done. This makes it even tougher.

To survive in a sector like this, you have to be clear about what you want to achieve at all times. The second is you have to lock your ego away because people will challenge you; they will tell you they know and you don’t; and they will tell you this is the way it is done and should be done. You will give a directive and people will do the complete opposite. They will agree with you while sitting with you but when they leave they will do something totally different. So you have to have the ability or develop the ability not to take any of these personal. Otherwise you find that you are consumed with fighting small battles here and there. I think keeping one's eye on the ball and focusing on only those things that matter, and not taking anything personal are the things that have helped me.

You have to have respect for people and their opinions. At the same time you don’t get taken in by people who call themselves experts. And you don’t hold on too strongly to your own opinions because if you do you will fail. You also need to learn how to listen. What I do most of the time is that I reduce my job to that of helping the federations to clarify their processes, methods, and objectives. I leave them to make their own decisions but I help them to clarify things and I also communicate to them very clearly and strongly what the national objective is. I never get to interfere in who gets employed as a football coach, or who gets to play in the national team. In fact, I never get to interfere in who gets contracts in the NSC.

There is this story that a coach nearly got you sacked at a time and an athlete saved you your job at another time. What is true and what is not?

Well, I don’t know where that came from. I think people were just trying to make sense of something that they didn’t understand and they came to their own conclusions. For me, I focus on those things that are within my control. What I do is that every single day that I wake up I focus on my job and try to do my best. Under my watch, we have achieved a lot in sports in this country. That is more than enough for me. But only one person hired me and only that one person can fire me, and that’s President Goodluck Jonathan.

You were in the Ministry of Youth Development before you came here. In terms of intensity and scope for change, how will you compare your experience in the two ministries?

I liked the Ministry of Youth a lot because there is a huge opportunity to do a lot of work in the youth sector. But unfortunately we have not, as a country, really clarified what we want to do with that ministry. When I was there we tried to give it an identity and a presence and I think within the one year that we spent in that ministry people began to notice that there is a ministry called the Ministry of Youth Development. We gave it a different orientation as a facilitating and advocacy ministry. We also tried to define ourselves as representatives of young people within government. We focused on that so much that young people began to believe they had a representation in government.

Sports is a different sector. It’s a pressure-cooker ministry. Everybody is interested, everybody is an expert, and there is no hiding place. So you have to be alert and politically sensible; you have to hone your manoeuvring skills; and you have to learn to bring people on board. I think the opportunity to learn leadership in sports is higher because every day people are playing games, literally speaking. When people are talking to you, you have to pay more attention to what they are not saying than what they are saying. I find the Ministry of Sports a lot more exciting and complex and challenging. And it’s the kind of challenges that I like to take on.

You were quoted once that you love solving problems or wrestling with challenges. Where did that mind-set come from and why is a problem-solving mind-set important for public work?

I believe the public sector should be a platform for solving public problems. If we don’t have a mind-set for solving problems, then we probably shouldn’t be here. But in trying to solve problems, we have to be clear what our own responsibilities are as leaders. Most of the time, you find that the leadership responsibility that we face at this level is merely to listen to other people. Sometimes however it’s about asking the right questions. Another time, it is about making people feel important.

You have spent almost equal time in journalism and public service. How have you managed the transition from journalism to public life? What important lessons have you learnt?

For me, it was almost seamless because journalism and public service are organically connected. In journalism, you write and think and talk about what needs to be done. Sometimes you take the liberty of proffering solutions. In public sector, you have the additional responsibility of not just suggesting solutions but of actually making the solution happen. So I find it directly connected and I actually think journalism is a good training ground for public service. Journalism experience allows you the kind of broad mindedness that is required to make impact in public service and journalism trains you to ask questions. Journalists are dreamers and idealists. Public service gives you a great opportunity to actualise those dreams and take responsibility for them. When there is an opportunity to translate that idealism into real change that is a huge privilege.

For people who might be thinking of this kind of transition, from whatever sector to public life, what are the rules of the road that you think can make them survive and make the difference?

The number one lesson is to come in believing you don’t know and here is an opportunity for you to learn. What I have learnt is that knowledge could also be an encumbrance. People who feel they know find it difficult to learn. The number two lesson is to learn political management. Some people say you can always walk away if things do not work out. Yes, you can. But that’s the easiest thing to do. How does walking away get the job done?