Bring the Coliseum Back at Adamasingba Stadium

Babajide Balogun

For the new generation of residents of Oyo State, they will grow up to have a sporting facility located in the heart of the ancient city of Ibadan, that they can be proud of.

The decent looks that now adorns the Adamasingba Stadium will motivate these new generation of sport enthusiasts in Oyo State to explore their dreams in the world of sports, thanks to the decision of the Governor Seyi Makinde’s administration to make an uplift of the facility. It is a relief to both the city of Ibadan and its residents who have watched that stadium become a shadow of itself through the years.

Long before now, Adamasingba is more renown as a terminal point for commercial public transportation in Ibadan than being reckoned with as a destination for sporting activities. Not only had the arenas and utilities inside the stadium become derelict over the years, the outward aesthetics of the stadium had become weather beaten, while the facility in its entire self was more or less a nuisance to the environment around it.

Conceived in 1976 and commissioned in 1988, several generation of residents in Ibadan grew up knowing the Adamasingba Stadium as breeding ground of great names in the world of sports especially football and lawn tennis. For those great names and their fans, it must have been emotionally disappointing to watch that great facility go into the relics.

Such was the pervasive state of anomie about the Adamasingba Stadium until the Seyi Makinde administration signed on to the mission of rescuing it. The vision to resuscitate the stadium came through the project financing ingenuous scheme known as Alternate Project Funding Approach (APFA) as espoused by the Makinde administration.

Through the scheme, the remodeling work at the Adamasingba Stadium will cost the Oyo State government approximately N6 billion, which the contractors will finance and the state government will repay in a 29-month stretch.

And, as it is typical with many of the infrastructure work of the Makinde government, the delivery of the remodeling of Adamsingba Stadium was done within a record time of barely a year and six months without any hullabaloo. As a matter of fact, it is fitting to describe the Oyo State governor as a master craftsman. He brings his expertise in engineering to bear as he creates symmetry in the fine art of social engineering and structural reconstruction. He comes with a special skill of equanimity while he undertakes tough tasks and his sense of judgement in policy priority comes with faultless precision.

With the Adamasingba Stadium added to the catalogue for infrastructure development by the current administration in Oyo State, it should be expected that the state government will boldly contest a hosting right for the national sports festival and other iconic sporting events in Oyo State. This is how the economics of high value investment in the stadium can have a direct impact in the local economy of the state.

It is through such events that the people of Oyo State can enjoy the business side of sports. No effort should, therefore, be spared to ensure that the availability of a modern sporting facility becomes a fulcrum in the activation of sport businesses in Oyo state and in the city of Ibadan in particular.

Another advantage that the remodeling of this stadium would bring is sports development. For a long time, Oyo State has lost its pride of place in the medal gallery of major sporting events. Such a decline is understandable owing the near absence of a functional training facility for Oyo State athletes .

It is instructive to advise the Makinde administration that its approach to sports developments should be bottom-up, and not just a one-off reconstruction of a major sporting facility in the state. The state government may borrow a leaf from its approach in education investment which is a full circle reformation through investment in both physical structures and manpower.
In the same vein, it will be appropriate if the state government will go a step further by identifying and recruiting future athletes in Oyo State from schools and through organizing state-wide sporting events where future athletes will be discovered and nurtured.

The way the Makinde administration is going by its massive investment in social infrastructure will invariably drive more private sector investments to Oyo State and an ample way to evaluate this is how real estate has become a booming enterprise in the state now. If the Makinde’s government continues this way, it is straight logic to expect that in the next few years, the state government would be in a viable position to expand its tax index and cause an increase in the state’s internal revenue portfolio.

Babajide Balogun sent this piece from Ologuneru, Ibadan