Dikko: We have deliberately created a budget line in the 2025 budget for the Olympics 2028 preparations!

Chairman of the National Sports Commission, Shehu Dikko says he and his colleagues at the Commission have resolved to go down a route never used in the past as far as preparations for major international competitions including the Olympics are concerned.

The former Nigeria Football Federation Vice President says they have observed that the key step is to change the nation’s pattern of preparing for the Olympics and other major international competitions and revealed funding will not be a problem.

‘In addition to other sporting activities, myself and my DG have managed to create a deliberate budget line in the 2025 budget for the Olympics 2028 preparations. We want to make this a standard in sports budgeting as preparations should not only be left till the year of the event but also a continuous yearly process hinged on some domestic sports development.

‘Every year we will make sure that there is funding in our budget lines for the Olympics preparation and other major competitions. There is also a budget line for the Commonwealth Games 2026 preparation.

‘So in addition to whatever we will do with the private sector, every year there should be funding in the budget to support preparations for these key events. We are going to arrest this trend of late preparations for the Olympics.

We thank Mr. President for backing us in this plan which clearly aligns with the renewed hope agenda and shared prosperity vision of Mr. President and indeed will be a foundation for activating our domestic sports echo system,’ said Dikko while declaring the virtual Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) Annual General Assembly open.

He revealed Commission has even made provisions in the budget for international competitions that the nation hasn’t yet qualified for in 2024 but may qualify in the 2025 fiscal year.

“For the first time in the service-wide-votes, there is some provision for the funding of international competitions. These funds were put in the service-wide-vote in case there are competitions which we qualify for in 2025, but as at today we have not qualified so as to reduce going for intervention funds all the time to fund this competitions.

‘So there is a clear process where they can go and take money from there for those competitions without going for intervention funds”, he added.

To ensure regular supply of talents for these global events, there is a deliberate disposition towards grassroots development of sports.

“There is a budget line created for talent identification and grassroots sports development. It’s a deliberate move to do that and Mr. President has even appointed an SSA on Grassroots Sports Development to show how serious he is with grassroots sports development”, said the NSC helmsman who reiterated his resolve to do things differently.

“As you are all aware, the president has taken the bold step to ensure that sports is run strictly by professionals by creating the National Sports Commission. He has also taken the bold decision to treat sports as a national asset. Therefore sports will get all the support and special consideration to drive it needs growth and to succeed.

‘We have resolved at the National Sports Commission to work with our colleagues at the NOC to achieve this mandate. Part of the mandate we have from Mr. President is to see how we work with all the stakeholders to see how we create the sports economy in Nigeria.

“The reason is that we have been focusing on all the competitions all these years and the result is the same. We win some, we lose some, while forgetting to develop our internal sports industry.

‘So the focus now is to reset what we used to do before from being more competition-driven to being developmental-driven. So we have to place more emphasis on development by creating the structures that will facilitate sports development.

‘While we are not going to disregard participation in the competitions, we have to work very hard to ensure we prepare and compete creditably in every competition we feature in.’