By Ben Ogbemudia
Few weeks to the commencement of the Olympics Games in Tokyo, the former Minister of Youths and Sports, Solomon Dalung on Friday said that the current preparation has been politicized by the Minister, Chief Sunday Dare hence Nigeria might not give us the desired result.
According to him, “What is actually happening is mere politics of preparation and it might not give us the desired result, what I expected was that we would have qualified long before now, because 2016, I came in 2015 and already there were concluded qualifiers which I inherited, all I did was to proceed camping and training but in2021 we came and made advance preparation on the ground and it was discontinued, even the national federation was dissolved on the eve of the Olympics.
“NO, you see, you don’t politicize preparation for the Olympics, it is a professional and technical thing, as last week we are still struggling to qualify in the Olympics and you cannot qualify for 3 or 4 weeks and expect to win gold medals.
“How do you disband a complete division of the army and it’s generally the following day before you go to war. You can’t do it, so some of the internal skirmishes, discarding plan that was existing, trying to do a new one, discarding leadership, even unlawfully, trying to create one, all these all together will determine how we going to perform in the Olympics but I am not a prophet.
“Well, I think Covid has contributed much in destabilizing our preparations for the Olympics, I think from the modest preparations put on the ground we can be able to participate successfully in Tokyo 2021, our prospect can be as anticipated or expected by Nigerians but of course we are going to do better than what we are expecting because we have not done much in terms of preparation and Olympic is a full year circle, the preparation is done in 4 years and it is done continuously. But what I have seen happening in the preparation is that the change in battle in the leadership of the ministry had led to the full battle of the preparation. So whatever that was going on was abandoned for something new. Such can never give results in the end because the government is continuous.
“You know when you have somebody blaming what he inherited, he might not have the capacity to solve the problems, because leadership is about the solution to a problem but if you inherit a problem, you solve it. When I came in, there were problems I inherited and I solved them and I didn’t even blame anybody or kept saying that I inherited problems.
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“So if you are a leader and you are now blaming that you inherited problems, then you don’t know what to do and you don’t know how to solve the problem because there will be no time that there will be problems as much as human beings are concerned.
“So do we keep saying that, I inherited the problem, you were brought in to solve the problems, so solve the problems but blaming me is just like having exhaustion of mental capacity to solve problems and you will have to look for Joseph, who will help Jesus Christ carry his cross.”
