BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
One of the liabilities that the administration of Governor Ademola Adeleke in Osun State inherited is the alleged deplorable condition of sports.
Owing to the poor maintenance culture of the previous state governments, the multi-billion naira Osogbo Township Stadium has been fraught with massive decay, findings by The Point have revealed.
The stadium also lacks necessary and modern sporting equipment as available structures are fast decaying.
When The Point visited the sporting facility, which has about 10,000 sitting capacity at Stadium Area in Osogbo recently, almost all the wooden chairs at the stadium had been destroyed by termites while weeds hadtaken over some abandoned parts of the premises.
Across the world, sporting activities are regarded as very important components of the socio-economic fabric of any nation, given the diverse ways Sport contributes to development. Government across all levels in Nigeria have always played crucial roles in the promotion of sports in the country, and till date, Nigeria remains a force to reckon with in the world of sports.
It was the dream of a former governor of the state, Olagunsoye Oyinlola, for the state to have six different stadiums.
Oyinlola had sited the headquarters of the stadium in Osogbo while work for the building of other stadiums had begun in Ilesa, Ede, Iwo, Ile-Ife and Ikirun.
Findings revealed that Oyinlola had borrowed some billions of naira for the projects.
However, the dream was cut short when the administration of former Governor Rauf Aregbesola purportedly ordered the stoppage of the building of stadiums in other towns except Osogbo.
Aregbesola was said to have borrowed another huge amount of money for the construction of the Osogbo Township Stadium, which has yet to be completed till date. Contractors had abandoned the work and had yet to formally hand over the Osogbo stadium to the state government because they were allegedly being owed.
When The Point visited the sites of the other five stadiums, they had been overrun with weeds; rodents hadrented some spaces while others were serving as a haven for criminals. However, it was gathered that indigenes of Iwo had been making efforts to develop the stadium site.
In an interview with The Point, a sports stakeholder in the state who did not want his name mentioned said, “We have six stadiums in Osun State. One in Ile-Ife, one in Iwo, one in Osogbo, that is the headquarters. Then, it was during the second term of the Olagunsoye Oyinlola regime that they had to rush the construction of Ikirun stadium and Ede before the administration of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola stopped everything. His administration said he wanted to concentrate on one stadium and that is the one in Osogbo.
“Oyinlola collected a loan of N18 billion for the construction of the six stadiums but when Aregbesola came, he forfeited the arrangement and said they should go back to just one stadium in Osogbo. That was when his administration (Aregbesola) went to collect N28 billion from the United Bank for Africa.
“Meanwhile, that of the N18 billion that Oyinlola said they wanted to use for the six stadiums, he only spent N8 billion and refunded N10 billion.
“Ikirun stadium should have been the best bet but because there is nothing on it. All the stadiums except Osogbo, are totally bushy. It is only the one in Osogbo I can tell you is functional, others have been overtaken by weeds and thick bush,” he added.
Despite complaints by stakeholders in the sports sector, both in Osun and outside the state, no tangible step has been taken by successive governments to address the deplorable situations in the stadiums, especially the one in the capital city.
In May 2021, during the administration of Gboyega Oyetola, a former President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick, during a working visit to the state, decried the poor standard of Osogbo Township Stadium pitch, saying it was not fit for good football. Notwithstanding his plea to the state government and football association to upgrade the pitch to an accepted standard, the bushy situation of the pitch has not changed.
About seven months after Pinnick’s lamentation, exactly in December, 2021, the Nigerian Women Football League declared that the Osogbo Township Stadium was no longer suitable to host any of its league matches in the state.
Aside from the pitch, it was gathered that the dressing room of the stadium has been in total neglect.
Stakeholders have lamented that sporting activities have been relegated in the state, owing to nonchalant attitudes of those in the helms of affairs towards promotion and development of the critical sector. They said sports investors had not developed interest in the state because of lack of facilities.
For them, aside from structural decay, athletes’ welfare was not prioritised, a situation that has been affecting the performance of the state’s contingents negatively in competitions outside the state.
In June this year, athletes working with the Osun State Sports Council blocked the entrance of the Osogbo City Stadium in protest over alleged poor disposition of the state government to their welfare.
The Chairman of the State Football Association, Sola Fanawopo, also decried the decaying condition of the main stadium and called on the state government to upgrade it to standard and also overhaul the entire sports industry.
Meanwhile, the incumbent state government and officials of the Sports Council have admitted the deplorable condition of sports in Osun.
Speaking recently when the parastatals monitoring team of the state government visited the city stadium, the General Manager of the Sports Council, Rotimi Dunmoye, noted that the poor conditions of sporting facilities in the state had caused a huge setback for sports development.
The state deputy governor, who doubles as the Commissioner for Sports, Kola Adewusi, while briefing the management team of the council recently, disclosed that the administration of Governor Ademola Adeleke hadcleared parts of the outstanding contract sum, which the past administration was under obligation to have paid the contractor handling the stadium project.
Adewusi promised to revitalise the sports industry, saying the efforts would start by fencing the Osogbo Township Stadium for security purposes.
