Plans by President Goodluck Jonathan to begin the process of concessioning National Stadium Lagos yesterday suffered serious setback following the absence of the minister of sports and chairman National Sports Commission (NSC), Malam Bolaji Abdullahi, who failed to show up at the scheduled inauguration of its steering committee members.
The inauguration ceremony which was fixed for 11 o’clock in the morning at the Minister’s Conference Room within Abuja National Stadium witnessed attendance of members of the committee mostly deputy directors appointed to represent various government Ministries, Departments and Agencies as well as the media who waited for close to an hour before NSC’s chief press secretary, Alfred Akinyemi, surfaced to announce the postponement.
Blueprint Sport observed that the sudden postponement even when the minister was said to have arrived at his office earlier did not go down well with the committee members who were already seated as most of them drove off angrily, while the remaining few were seen discussing the development.
It was gathered that the membership of the committee were drawn mainly from Ministry of Justice, Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE), Public Private Partnership (PPP), and National Sports Commission (NSC) among others.
Reacting to the development, one of the members of the committee, who preferred to lie low: “This kind of action is embarrassing not only to us but also to the government we are representing. We all came here and you can see how we have treated. Nobody has come forward to explain the reason for the cancellation. All we saw is someone who came to rub the cancellation on our faces without any reason.”
The botched inauguration of the steering committee to look into how to concession the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos, after it was approved by President Goodluck Jonathan last month took place few months after NSC was reported to have sunk N96m in re-grassing the Abuja National Stadium.
The stadium, built in 1972 by the Yakubu Gowon administration to host the 1973 All Africa Games has remained a shadow of itself after the construction of the Abuja National Stadium incidentally to host the 2003 All Africa Games.
