I am the chairman of the Nigeria Academicals Sports Committee set up by the Presidency and saddled with the responsibility to revive the tradition of sports development within the secondary schools system in Nigeria. Before this assignment I had been singing like a canary that the country was sitting on a time bomb. My worry had come from the growing concern about unengaged and rampaging youths in the country. The country has an increasing number of graduates that are either jobless or simply unemployable due mainly to the poor quality of education they receive in institutions whose academic and social standards have fallen to an abysmally low level. There is also an increasing number of drop outs from schools, as well as those that have chosen not to have any western education at all for reasons of religion, gender, poverty and ignorance! Whatever the reasons, Nigeria is now the habitat to a conservative army of young boys and girls that are unemployed, poorly or uneducated, frustrated, idle, unskilled, unmotivated, angry and hungry.
It is mooted in several quarters that it is just a matter of time before the chicken comes home to roost and that the country shall pay the price for not arresting the situation before it gets totally out of hand. With the recent concerns over insecurity in the country, the spate of bombings, the kidnappings, the robberies, the political thuggery, the militarised youths, many are worried that the country may already have reached a point of no return. What to do about a cancer that is 40 million-youths deep?
Every sector of the country’s polity must come to the rescue by playing a role in providing ‘little drops’ that will eventually, many years down the line, ‘an ocean make’. It is in that regard that I, once again, bring to the fore how sports can impact massively and effectively in creating awareness about the situation, driving the process of the change, complimenting the effort of other sectors, and providing hitherto neglected but invaluable opportunities for engaging the youth in sports, education and youth development in the country. The three must go hand in hand.

Sport, as in physical activity, will provide its rich menu of health and fitness (to ensure that the majority of the youths are ‘sound in body and in mind’), plus promoting the image of the country through the winning of medals and trophies for both country and self, and making some economic contribution to the country in the process. Beyond the physical side of sport, however, there is a rich untapped world that awaits the artist’s brush. This is the world of the sports economy, a world of business that covers manufacturing, merchandising, marketing, training and coaching, film, the media, construction, betting and the lottery, grounds design and construction, facilities management, consultancy, law, events and athletes management, travels and tours, security, law, sports injuries and rehabilitation, insurance, sports medicine, photography, administration, sports tourism, events organisation, bars and resorts, and so on and so forth! These are employment-generation opportunities within the sports economy that lie dormant at the moment, wasting in the oasis of opportunity. These are solid ‘properties’ within the sports economy that will create millions of employment opportunities for the youths of the country. Government must take a closer look in this direction.

Beyond sports and beyond the employment-generation opportunities, sport drives an even more important cause – that of education. Even the United Nations and FIFA have appreciated its potency and power to use the passion of the youth to drive essential causes, the most important of which has been, in the past few years, the cause of ‘education for all’! There is no greater fuel for under-development than a lack of education. It is the foundation upon which every civilization is built. The conservative, almost 20 million (the figure keeps changing depending on the source of the information) out-of-school youths in Nigeria constitute, perhaps, the country’s greatest social problem. What that portends for the future is a bleakness that must frighten even the recklessly optimistic amongst the citizenry.

As the Nigerian Ambassador of the ’1-Goal Education for All’ project, and an active member of one of the civil society advocates of education-for-all in Nigeria, I know that with the right legislation and projects in place, sports can be effectively used to drive enrolment and retention of children in schools. Presented with irresistible incentives to advance their education beyond secondary school (concessions in entry requirements, lesser academic scores, more skills acquisition programmes, scholarships, etc), or even to pursue professional careers in any one of several sports after a basic education, the youths will rush to get an education. We must stop looking at sport only in its physical context of training and competition on the fields, courts, lawns and tracks, and start to appreciate its other extensive benefits accruable from the spin-offs.

We can deal with the present challenge of providing a meaningful future for a large army of our youths through gathering information and exploiting the opportunities that lie in and around sports. Thats why I am excited about the Nigeria Academicals Sports project whose foundation is presently being laid that will take off in October. It will definitely make a meaningful, measurable contribution to the effort of government to curb the challenges of youth restiveness in the country – that of job seekers roaming the streets, of touts at the motor garages, of thugs that fight political battles, of sophisticated armed robbers, of kidnappers, of religious and economic militants, of area boys and other agitators. This is the army conscripted by poverty and evil to truncate Nigeria’s march to greatness. There is growing apprehension that this situation could become the most serious social problem in the country and one that could tear the country apart!

It is obvious to me now that the role that sports can play and the contributions they can make to arresting this poor state of affairs is grossly underestimated. This is apparent in the manner the issue of sports is still perceived, discussed and treated in the political space and in government. Sport is only ever discussed as a force that unites the country when a football match is being played. It is never discussed as a possible national economic contributor, a national health tool, a tool to drive major issues involving the youths, a tool to teach life’s lessons in hard work, team work, individual and collective responsibility, integration, fair play and higher moral values.

Sports and youth development in Nigeria can only be measurably achieved through and within the schools system. Therefore, sports must be made to become a major plank of our educational development. Schools must provide for opportunity to engage students in physical activity through the years from Primary school to tertiary schools. Thats how other advanced societies have engaged their youths productively. The schools will provide the space for mass sports participation, provide those that have exceptional talent with the opportunity to pursue careers in the field, and many more the opportunity to pursue carers within the sports economy.

Sport must start to be seen beyond sport itself!