I Like To Solve Problems, Fix Things — Abdullahi
Mallam
Bolaji Abdullahi is the Minister of Youth Development and Supervising
Minister of Sports. In this interview with Ishaku Kigbu and John Oba, he
opens up on the challenges and dynamics of the two sensitive
ministries.
You are presiding over two important ministries, Youth Development and Sports, how has it been?
It’s been quite challenging and also very exciting. This is because we are dealing with two difficult constituencies that have to do with youth and sports. It is challenging in the sense that you now have multiplicity of issues to contend with, and exciting because it provides opportunity to make a change that will bring about difference.
You know that sport is a jealous wife; if you are not careful, you will find out that things may not work out the way you want them. But so far, we are okay.
You are four months now as a supervising minister of sports, and you came with a tripod agenda: one is the Olympics, then the crisis in Nigerian football and the third intention is to reorganize the sector; how far have you achieved this?
Like you rightly said, my immediate responsibility is to provide initiative for Nigeria’s preparation for the Olympics. It was so tempting to limit my task to just that, and that would have been relatively easier because I am not going to run, jug or swim; I only need to monitor and supervise to see that everything happens seamlessly to also ensure that the preparations get the right kind of support that they need at the government level, at the cabinet level and the right kind of funding and persons to manage the intrigues involved. We can do that routinely for things to go very well to the extent that one could claim that he has discharged his responsibility well.
But I think I came at a time it could be regarded as the worst period, at a time it is the worst for Nigerian football. As far as Nigeria is concerned no matter what you do in other sports, without football it's like you have not done anything. When people say decline in Nigerian sports, when you look at the statistics, they don’t support that claim, because whether it is the All Africa Games in Maputo, or the recent one in India, Nigeria has been doing very well in other sports, but because we are not doing well in football, they say decline in Nigeria sports. So, it is like football has become the metaphor for Nigerian sport. Nigerians are more interested in football than any other sport.
Having the opportunity to provide leadership at that sector at the worst possible moment in Nigerian football history imposes certain responsibilities on one. At the time that the Nation’s Cup was going on and Nigeria was not playing for the first time in 28 years, not to talk about our failure to even qualify for the football event at the Olympics, that is a big issue for anyone who has the opportunity to work in the sector this time.
Of course, I must say that many people came to me, saying: 'Just leave this football matter; it is complex and complicated; it’s going to consume you; it has consumed five ministers. Don’t get yourself involved, just face this other sports, after all you are a minister of sports and not football and you are there for a short time anyway, so why get yourself involved in this mess'.
Well intentioned as all these pieces of advice may be, but I am the type that likes to solve problems. I like to fix things; so I recognised immediately that it’s going to be difficult but I will still engage it. So, I got involved in the football matter and you know where we are now.
On the third one about reorganising the sector, for me that’s the most important task. I don’t know if I will have the time to get through that, but I know that whoever is the sports minister needs to reorganise the entire sector, because the entire sector is such an absolute confusion - a lot of crisis, and unless we are able to create systems and procedures that would delineate the lines of individuals, institutions' authority and responsibilities, we will continue to have this kind of confusion and conflicts that cripple a system.
Nigeria Institute for Sport (NIS) is the biggest institution that we can use to turn around football and sports in Nigeria. It’s a whole institution for building talents. But, so far, I can confidently say, within the four months, that the problems are not impossible to solve; they can be solved.
You scored an A in terms of how fast you fixed the football problem, like you said several ministers came but couldn’t just fix it because of the complexity, but you achieved that. Now, eyes are on you to do much more because there are others who are still aggrieved. Are you satisfied with what you have done? How are you going to bring those still by the side in?
What we have achieved is by no means trivial considering where we are coming from. It is absolutely the grace of God. I think God has given one also the personality that is necessary to drive that kind of process. And what is that personality? That personality is that which allows you to disconnect your ego from the work you are doing.
If you are able to keep your ego safely locked in the box, then it is easy for you to engage with people without feeling 'oh! Why is he talking to me like that, I am the minister; he is not showing me enough respect, he is planning this against me'. So, once you don’t carry that baggage of ego, then it is easy for you to level with people and be honest with them.
Acknowledge people’s grievances and be willing to listen to them and create an atmosphere of trust - whether in the side of the aggrieved people or the people that they are aggrieved at, not shortchanging them.
That is the major positive factor in the process we have tried to achieve and of course one’s ability to know the limit of one’s ability as it were. At a point, I realised I needed to bring in a higher authority and that was the point I invited the secretary to the federal government to come support my effort. That also helped in a very big way. We were able to drive the process together.
But you asked if I am satisfied with the stage we are now, the answer is no! Like I said, what we have achieved only provides a reasonable ground for us to move forward because the engine was knocked completely.
So, what we have done is to try to overhaul the entire engine and get the engine to start running. So, getting it to start running is different from getting it in perfect shape; it is not in perfect shape yet.
And, like you rightly pointed out, there so many other aggrieved people. We will try to bring them in and try to appeal to them, try to appease and address them, and if possible address some of the issues and concerns they are raising. And I strongly believe that unless we are able to this, it will be difficult.
All the previous ministers that we talked about, I believe, had very good intentions and l believe that they were also committed to making a change, maybe they didn’t have the opportunity to relate with some of these people at the level at which I was able to do, and also don’t forget that I am an outsider - I don’t know any of them, so that may be the reason that helped me look at it very objectively. I believe there is a lot more work to do and we would try as much as we have done.
You were at FIFA two weeks ago, and before you left a lot of questions were raised as to whether there was any need for you to go to FIFA. Was it a futile effort?
Before we left for Zurich, there were all kinds of controversies. In fact, one reporter asked me, 'As you’ve resolved this matter, now what are you still going to do in Zurich? I said I was going to Zurich because of the extacode (laughter). The point is that, before we even started, there were people who were saying, 'Don’t get involved in this thing; FIFA will ban you'.
There were all kinds of people interpreting FIFA statutes and threatening everybody with FIFA. Then I said I wanted to see this masquerade called FIFA. If there is nothing else we can achieve from visiting Zurich, at least let us hear from them what exactly they break people’s head for. And I wanted them to tell me that their statutes were superior to the laws of Nigeria.
I wanted them to tell me that by themselves. I wanted them to tell me that I could not be funding an organisation to the tune of N3bn of tax payers’ money but don’t have the right to ask questions on how the money is used. Then there were so many people who were calling themselves FIFA this, CAF that, FIFA experts, FIFA translators, FIFA legal jurists and all kinds of cacophonies of names. So, I wanted to go there to 'demystify' if possible some of these things, because it was a mystery to me. It falls outside the purview of my experience.
So, if the only thing I will be able to get about this is to come out with a clear knowledge of the limits of my authority and of the ministry’s responsibilities, that would be something major for me. Then I can come back and tell the ministry, 'behave yourself; we don’t have this authority because this is what FIFA told me'.
I also knew that there were many people who didn’t want us to go, because they also knew that going to FIFA also meant the process of demystifying this FIFA that they have been using to bamboozle everybody; because I was going to learn, and when you allow anybody to learn it means you have empowered that person - so they didn’t want us to learn. I didn’t mean any mischief, because I went with the NFF people - Aminu Maigari, Musa Amadu and others, so there was no hidden agenda.
But when I woke up in the morning of that day, the first story I saw was Abdullahi in Zurich, FIFA’s Blatter in Brazil. I said how is that possible, then I called the Nigerian Ambassador who arranged the meeting, and he said it was not possible because he had a letter signed by Blatter himself. So at 10am, we were at the FIFA headquarters.
The first thing I saw was the Nigerian flag hanging in front of FIFA headquarters and I asked why they are flying Nigeria’s flag, they said it was because they were expecting us; then I took the picture. They hoisted the flag because they were expecting Nigeria in their headquarters. So we got in and one of the secretaries took us to one of the conference rooms; the room had already been arranged with our name plates.
FIFA officials on their side had their own name plates. Then five minutes after, Blatter walked in with a team of seven people - the entire team came to receive us. Then we had two hours meeting and Blatter said he was very happy that we were able to resolve the problem, because I told him that we did not bring problems from Nigeria because they came with files containing Nigeria cases and were expecting us to come and say this person is fighting this person.
They were immensely relieved when I told them that we have been able to resolve this matter and that the litigants had agreed to withdraw the cases in court. They were so happy. Meanwhile, back in Nigeria, some people were saying the agreement was against FIFA statutes and FIFA never told us that whatever we did was against its status; in fact, we gave them the copy of the agreement; they never said that it was against their status.
But some Nigerians were weeping more than the bereaved. We told the other things we are doing in the area of trying to reconcile FIFA statutes with the Nigerian national law and they were very happy and said there are different models for different countries, and each country has to decide what model works for them.
Two things that make them want to take actions against countries are: one, when the government sacks a democratically elected board, or when government want to run football directly, but for any other thing, countries would have to look at the model that works for them. And I told them that we fund football to the tune of N3bn in a year and they said how much is that in dollars, we did the arithmetic and it came to about $20m a year.
They looked at the NFF people and said, 'you guys never told us.' They do not know! Then they said they cannot ask government not to ask questions about how its money is spent, but that the only thing is that the grant that is given by FIFA, FIFA has an auditing process to audit the money given by FIFA. FIFA told us that, even after auditing, they are ready to share the outcome with any government.
They said that even after the auditing accounts of money given to the football federation, FIFA is always happy to share the report with government. So, what I see in FIFA is an institution that is willing to partner with government, and it shows that they realise that every country has its own reality in the management and governance of football.
The term that I have come up with after the interaction is what I call 'Embedded Autonomy'. That is that they want football administration to be autonomous of government but also know that that autonomy is embedded within the reality of government’s administration and funding system.
Like I said, when I came back after I spoke with them for two hours and they never mentioned that they have some experts in Nigeria given the responsibility of translating FIFA status, l believe these people going about parading themselves as 'FIFAist' or 'CAFist' have only assigned themselves the responsibilities for whatever reasons I don’t know. But what I know is that nobody can come forward now and intimidate us with FIFA.
But, in fairness to Aminu Maigari and others, they never for one day said that government is not important. Aminu Maigari told me that ‘I am not a citizen of FIFA, I am a citizen of Nigeria and I am ready and willing to obey the laws of Nigeria and the constitution of Nigeria’ - that is what he told me.
It is not Aminu or Amadu the secretary that are saying that, but there are other people who have assigned themselves different responsibilities for whatever reasons, but I am glad that we have been able to cross this threshold.
You are presiding over two important ministries, Youth Development and Sports, how has it been?
It’s been quite challenging and also very exciting. This is because we are dealing with two difficult constituencies that have to do with youth and sports. It is challenging in the sense that you now have multiplicity of issues to contend with, and exciting because it provides opportunity to make a change that will bring about difference.
You know that sport is a jealous wife; if you are not careful, you will find out that things may not work out the way you want them. But so far, we are okay.
You are four months now as a supervising minister of sports, and you came with a tripod agenda: one is the Olympics, then the crisis in Nigerian football and the third intention is to reorganize the sector; how far have you achieved this?
Like you rightly said, my immediate responsibility is to provide initiative for Nigeria’s preparation for the Olympics. It was so tempting to limit my task to just that, and that would have been relatively easier because I am not going to run, jug or swim; I only need to monitor and supervise to see that everything happens seamlessly to also ensure that the preparations get the right kind of support that they need at the government level, at the cabinet level and the right kind of funding and persons to manage the intrigues involved. We can do that routinely for things to go very well to the extent that one could claim that he has discharged his responsibility well.
But I think I came at a time it could be regarded as the worst period, at a time it is the worst for Nigerian football. As far as Nigeria is concerned no matter what you do in other sports, without football it's like you have not done anything. When people say decline in Nigerian sports, when you look at the statistics, they don’t support that claim, because whether it is the All Africa Games in Maputo, or the recent one in India, Nigeria has been doing very well in other sports, but because we are not doing well in football, they say decline in Nigeria sports. So, it is like football has become the metaphor for Nigerian sport. Nigerians are more interested in football than any other sport.
Having the opportunity to provide leadership at that sector at the worst possible moment in Nigerian football history imposes certain responsibilities on one. At the time that the Nation’s Cup was going on and Nigeria was not playing for the first time in 28 years, not to talk about our failure to even qualify for the football event at the Olympics, that is a big issue for anyone who has the opportunity to work in the sector this time.
Of course, I must say that many people came to me, saying: 'Just leave this football matter; it is complex and complicated; it’s going to consume you; it has consumed five ministers. Don’t get yourself involved, just face this other sports, after all you are a minister of sports and not football and you are there for a short time anyway, so why get yourself involved in this mess'.
Well intentioned as all these pieces of advice may be, but I am the type that likes to solve problems. I like to fix things; so I recognised immediately that it’s going to be difficult but I will still engage it. So, I got involved in the football matter and you know where we are now.
On the third one about reorganising the sector, for me that’s the most important task. I don’t know if I will have the time to get through that, but I know that whoever is the sports minister needs to reorganise the entire sector, because the entire sector is such an absolute confusion - a lot of crisis, and unless we are able to create systems and procedures that would delineate the lines of individuals, institutions' authority and responsibilities, we will continue to have this kind of confusion and conflicts that cripple a system.
Nigeria Institute for Sport (NIS) is the biggest institution that we can use to turn around football and sports in Nigeria. It’s a whole institution for building talents. But, so far, I can confidently say, within the four months, that the problems are not impossible to solve; they can be solved.
You scored an A in terms of how fast you fixed the football problem, like you said several ministers came but couldn’t just fix it because of the complexity, but you achieved that. Now, eyes are on you to do much more because there are others who are still aggrieved. Are you satisfied with what you have done? How are you going to bring those still by the side in?
What we have achieved is by no means trivial considering where we are coming from. It is absolutely the grace of God. I think God has given one also the personality that is necessary to drive that kind of process. And what is that personality? That personality is that which allows you to disconnect your ego from the work you are doing.
If you are able to keep your ego safely locked in the box, then it is easy for you to engage with people without feeling 'oh! Why is he talking to me like that, I am the minister; he is not showing me enough respect, he is planning this against me'. So, once you don’t carry that baggage of ego, then it is easy for you to level with people and be honest with them.
Acknowledge people’s grievances and be willing to listen to them and create an atmosphere of trust - whether in the side of the aggrieved people or the people that they are aggrieved at, not shortchanging them.
That is the major positive factor in the process we have tried to achieve and of course one’s ability to know the limit of one’s ability as it were. At a point, I realised I needed to bring in a higher authority and that was the point I invited the secretary to the federal government to come support my effort. That also helped in a very big way. We were able to drive the process together.
But you asked if I am satisfied with the stage we are now, the answer is no! Like I said, what we have achieved only provides a reasonable ground for us to move forward because the engine was knocked completely.
So, what we have done is to try to overhaul the entire engine and get the engine to start running. So, getting it to start running is different from getting it in perfect shape; it is not in perfect shape yet.
And, like you rightly pointed out, there so many other aggrieved people. We will try to bring them in and try to appeal to them, try to appease and address them, and if possible address some of the issues and concerns they are raising. And I strongly believe that unless we are able to this, it will be difficult.
All the previous ministers that we talked about, I believe, had very good intentions and l believe that they were also committed to making a change, maybe they didn’t have the opportunity to relate with some of these people at the level at which I was able to do, and also don’t forget that I am an outsider - I don’t know any of them, so that may be the reason that helped me look at it very objectively. I believe there is a lot more work to do and we would try as much as we have done.
You were at FIFA two weeks ago, and before you left a lot of questions were raised as to whether there was any need for you to go to FIFA. Was it a futile effort?
Before we left for Zurich, there were all kinds of controversies. In fact, one reporter asked me, 'As you’ve resolved this matter, now what are you still going to do in Zurich? I said I was going to Zurich because of the extacode (laughter). The point is that, before we even started, there were people who were saying, 'Don’t get involved in this thing; FIFA will ban you'.
There were all kinds of people interpreting FIFA statutes and threatening everybody with FIFA. Then I said I wanted to see this masquerade called FIFA. If there is nothing else we can achieve from visiting Zurich, at least let us hear from them what exactly they break people’s head for. And I wanted them to tell me that their statutes were superior to the laws of Nigeria.
I wanted them to tell me that by themselves. I wanted them to tell me that I could not be funding an organisation to the tune of N3bn of tax payers’ money but don’t have the right to ask questions on how the money is used. Then there were so many people who were calling themselves FIFA this, CAF that, FIFA experts, FIFA translators, FIFA legal jurists and all kinds of cacophonies of names. So, I wanted to go there to 'demystify' if possible some of these things, because it was a mystery to me. It falls outside the purview of my experience.
So, if the only thing I will be able to get about this is to come out with a clear knowledge of the limits of my authority and of the ministry’s responsibilities, that would be something major for me. Then I can come back and tell the ministry, 'behave yourself; we don’t have this authority because this is what FIFA told me'.
I also knew that there were many people who didn’t want us to go, because they also knew that going to FIFA also meant the process of demystifying this FIFA that they have been using to bamboozle everybody; because I was going to learn, and when you allow anybody to learn it means you have empowered that person - so they didn’t want us to learn. I didn’t mean any mischief, because I went with the NFF people - Aminu Maigari, Musa Amadu and others, so there was no hidden agenda.
But when I woke up in the morning of that day, the first story I saw was Abdullahi in Zurich, FIFA’s Blatter in Brazil. I said how is that possible, then I called the Nigerian Ambassador who arranged the meeting, and he said it was not possible because he had a letter signed by Blatter himself. So at 10am, we were at the FIFA headquarters.
The first thing I saw was the Nigerian flag hanging in front of FIFA headquarters and I asked why they are flying Nigeria’s flag, they said it was because they were expecting us; then I took the picture. They hoisted the flag because they were expecting Nigeria in their headquarters. So we got in and one of the secretaries took us to one of the conference rooms; the room had already been arranged with our name plates.
FIFA officials on their side had their own name plates. Then five minutes after, Blatter walked in with a team of seven people - the entire team came to receive us. Then we had two hours meeting and Blatter said he was very happy that we were able to resolve the problem, because I told him that we did not bring problems from Nigeria because they came with files containing Nigeria cases and were expecting us to come and say this person is fighting this person.
They were immensely relieved when I told them that we have been able to resolve this matter and that the litigants had agreed to withdraw the cases in court. They were so happy. Meanwhile, back in Nigeria, some people were saying the agreement was against FIFA statutes and FIFA never told us that whatever we did was against its status; in fact, we gave them the copy of the agreement; they never said that it was against their status.
But some Nigerians were weeping more than the bereaved. We told the other things we are doing in the area of trying to reconcile FIFA statutes with the Nigerian national law and they were very happy and said there are different models for different countries, and each country has to decide what model works for them.
Two things that make them want to take actions against countries are: one, when the government sacks a democratically elected board, or when government want to run football directly, but for any other thing, countries would have to look at the model that works for them. And I told them that we fund football to the tune of N3bn in a year and they said how much is that in dollars, we did the arithmetic and it came to about $20m a year.
They looked at the NFF people and said, 'you guys never told us.' They do not know! Then they said they cannot ask government not to ask questions about how its money is spent, but that the only thing is that the grant that is given by FIFA, FIFA has an auditing process to audit the money given by FIFA. FIFA told us that, even after auditing, they are ready to share the outcome with any government.
They said that even after the auditing accounts of money given to the football federation, FIFA is always happy to share the report with government. So, what I see in FIFA is an institution that is willing to partner with government, and it shows that they realise that every country has its own reality in the management and governance of football.
The term that I have come up with after the interaction is what I call 'Embedded Autonomy'. That is that they want football administration to be autonomous of government but also know that that autonomy is embedded within the reality of government’s administration and funding system.
Like I said, when I came back after I spoke with them for two hours and they never mentioned that they have some experts in Nigeria given the responsibility of translating FIFA status, l believe these people going about parading themselves as 'FIFAist' or 'CAFist' have only assigned themselves the responsibilities for whatever reasons I don’t know. But what I know is that nobody can come forward now and intimidate us with FIFA.
But, in fairness to Aminu Maigari and others, they never for one day said that government is not important. Aminu Maigari told me that ‘I am not a citizen of FIFA, I am a citizen of Nigeria and I am ready and willing to obey the laws of Nigeria and the constitution of Nigeria’ - that is what he told me.
It is not Aminu or Amadu the secretary that are saying that, but there are other people who have assigned themselves different responsibilities for whatever reasons, but I am glad that we have been able to cross this threshold.
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