The Senator said this during senate plenary yesterday while addressing
issues regarding the non-payment of allowances of the Super Falcons. He
said
“We are a nation that builds stadiums but play no matches in them, we
are a nation that spends a quarter of a billion dollars to buy
equipments for NTA for the All Africa Games, but after the event, we
don’t use the equipment.
It seems like when it comes to awarding contracts to
build facilities we are experts at them. I remember telling President
Obasanjo at the time, there was no need to build the stadium at Abuja,
that the All Africa Games could have been held in Lagos like they did in
1972. Now the stadium is built, when El-Rufai was FCT Minister, he went
to take it over, he asked how much does it take to maintain, they told
him JB was charging two billion naira every year just for maintenance,
Please I don’t want it anymore. The problem we have right now is this,
we care about structures, we don’t care about people and this applies to
every government since 1960. It is a disgrace what is happening to our
girls, it is a disgrace what happens to our football players, our
boxers, our tennis players, swimmers and all athletes representing
Nigeria. We must take a position, we either care about human beings or
we care about bricks and mortar, we either care about people or we care
about giving out contracts, the talent for Nigeria to be great is the
people we have in this country, but the government of Nigeria do not
care about human beings, they only care about giving out contracts. Now
we have won the competition, something as simple as paying wages to our
young ladies who are the heroes of our time is not being paid because
there are no contracts to be awarded. The entire sports division must be
overhauled and only people with intelligence, commitment, passion and a
drive to make Nigeria great should be appointed to the ministry of
sports and government should understand that this is serious business.
Every time I see a kid selling paper on the street running, you see an
area-boy but I see a 100m world champion because that is how they are
made. All the kids in America who are now heroes all came from the
ghetto. Nobody in this chamber, none of our children will be world
champion because they are too rich. Only the children of the poor will
go into sports. The children of the rich will go into science and
technology, they will not go into sports. So what we have done is
deprive the child of the poor a chance to make a living and to be
successful and this is very important. Whether you are Dick Tiger, Hogan
Bassey, any world champion we have ever had, they have never been
children of the rich. The children of the poor are the ones who we are
depriving a chance to make a living and be successful. I urge all my
noisy colleagues to please support this motion and get the government to
paid the allowances of these beautiful children so that we can be great
again.”
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