Dikko: Nigeria’s journey towards a sustainable Sports Economy has begun

Mallam Shehu Dikko, Chairman of the National Sports Commission NSC, says the Country’s journey towards a sustainable Sports Economy has begun.

Mallam Dikko stated this on Wednesday when the former Minister of Sports, Senator John Enoh officially handed over the affairs of the country’s sports to him in a brief ceremony in Abuja.

‘History has a way of coming full circle because in 2008 I was a consultant to the House of Representatives and was responsible for the drafting of the National Sports Commission Bill, a job I did pro-bono and about 16 years down the line I have here with the assignment to implement the work I assisted to put together’.

‘The objective of Mr. President is to harness the full potentials of the Sports Economy in Nigeria’.

‘And we have to first change our mindset from the fixation of just competitions and winning medals and come back and fix our domestic Sports Development’.

‘When we set the foundation right, the results and the winning of medals will naturally come in a sustainable manner and that should be the new mindset’.

‘We cannot continue to run in cycles so we need to have a different approach from day one because in my view and indeed the firm view of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, competitions is what we call ‘Consumption’ because we just take scarce resources and burn out abroad without any impact on the domestic sports development ecosystem and the Nigerian Economy.

‘But we have to go back to ‘Production’ which is deliberate Sports Development, where we set the structure right, set the framework and put together good parameters to have a sustainable Sports Development which will naturally give us a solid Sports Economy and indeed guaranteed competitive participation at all competitions and medals.

‘We have to also work on Legislations and Regulations so as to set the framework to enable the Industry to grow effectively like what happened in the communications industry some years back.

‘The thinking of Mr President is that we should be able to measure the country’s Sports by its contribution to the nation’s GDP by at least three percent (3%) addition the number of jobs sports and its value chain are providing in country in the next four to five years.