Letting ‘lesser’ sports breathe, by Patrick Omorodion

The Bible tells us that “people perish for lack of knowledge”.
And the government of Nigeria at a time worsened the situation by removing history as a subject in our schools curriculum. Tell me, what did they aim to achieve with that decision. Thank God the subject has been reintroduced in our schools curriculum. Our pupils and students need to be taught the correct history of Nigeria.
Why did I bring this up? Of course, our political class, the military politicians, so to speak, made us believe that football is the king of sports in the country and therefore adopted it as number one sports.
Sports, particularly cricket and football were first introduced to Nigeria by the British Colonial administrators in the 19th century.
History tells us that English missionaries and army personnel added impetus to the spread of the games. We are also told that the first recorded football and cricket matches in Nigeria were in 1904.
Nigeria Cricket Association (expatriates) was formed in 1932 while the indigenous cricketers responded with a Nigeria Cricket Association (indigenous) in 1933.
In the same vein, football association was formed by the expatriates in 1933 but the indigenous people officially formed theirs as Nigeria Football Association, NFA in 1945.
Again we are told that in 1951, a joint board of control for cricket was inaugurated in Lagos with each association retaining its identity. Nigeria Cricket Association (NCA), an amalgamation of both expatriate and indigenous bodies, eventually evolved in 1957. The name was however, changed to Nigeria Cricket
Federation (NCF) in 2006.
Most schools in Nigeria in the early years, before and after Independence, were run by missionaries and so they made Cricket popular in those schools.
The incursion of the military into our political life changed all that. They found football to be the opium of the masses
Dr. Michael Omolayole, a fan of this Column said during their days, they could just roll rubber together and start playing it on the streets. I will never forget the words of one sports administrator in Oyo State during the military era that, “football is a propaganda machine for government”.
Civilian governments followed in that stead by making football the number one sport in the country and devoted more time and resources to its promotion and for competition rather than development.
That was how cricket and other sports now categorized as ‘lesser’ sports suffered neglect and poor funding.
A brief history of the rise of cricket here will suffice as obtained from their archives.
‘Following its first recorded international match in 1904, Nigeria and its neighbour Ghana played each other on numerous occasions. In 1959, Rex Akpofure made history by becoming the first Nigerian to captain a joint Nigerian team (expatriates and locals) in a series against Ghana. Prior to that, in 1954, a match between Nigeria and Ghana was played to mark the golden jubilee of cricket relations between both countries in which the Nigerian team was captained by Eddy Hughes (a Nigerian).
In 1964, Nigeria expanded its international horizon by establishing contact with the Gambia and Sierra Leone. West African Cricket Council, WACC was formed in 1965 and a quadrangular tournament featuring the four West African countries of Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone commenced in 1976 with Nigeria being the pioneer host. Nigeria won the first 10 editions of the WACC Quadrangular from 1976 to 1997.
The Nigerian team toured East Africa in 1973 over six weeks, playing in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia. The team won two, lost two and drew six international matches during the tour but won most of the friendly matches. In February 1974, a return tour was undertaken by Tanzania to Nigeria. The earliest exposure of Nigerians to cricket in the UK was organised in the 1950s and 1960s by Unilever (UK) in co-operation with colonial civil servants, company staff on vacation and Nigerian students or summer visitors in the UK.”
From the above you can see that cricket is as old as football if not older. Just that focus is now more on football by the government. However, the arrival of the current president of the Nigeria Cricket Federation, NCF, Mr. Uyi Akpata has changed the fortune of the sport. He and his team embarked on strategic planning and investment, they didn’t wait for government funding.
And today, the cricket revolution is unfolding faster than anticipated, as the NCF boss postulated himself.
The country’s female U-19 team, the Junior Yellow Greens, made history at the recent ICC U-19 Women’s T20 World Cup in Malaysia. A remarkable feat for a team making its debut on the world stage.
According to Akpata, “Our development plan was showing that we should have been here by 2028, but these girls just keep redefining the standards. It shows that when you invest a lot, the results come through, even faster than expected.”
The two men at the helm of affairs at the National Sports Commission, NSC, Shehu Dikko and Bukola Olopade were so excited that they splashed dollars on the girls.
It should not end there though because it would amount to giving them fish to eat rather than teaching them how to catch the fish themselves.
These so-called lesser sports should be encouraged. They need infrastructure for training and competitions. Their athletes equally need better welfare packages like their counterparts in football get.
Only that way will the country benefit from its potential in the sport sector. This is my message to Dikko and Olopade today. I wish both of them successful tenures.