Dare: One of Buhari Presidency Legacies is Rehabilitations of Sports Facilities

Duro Ikhazuagbe 

Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Chief Sunday Dare, has stressed that one of the legacies the outgoing government of President Muhammadu Buhari will be remembered for is the the huge efforts on rehabilitation and maintenance of sporting facilities in Nigeria.

Dare insisted at the weekend in Lagos during a short visit to the National Stadium, Surulere that the turn-around of sporting facilities in the last eight years of the Buhari regime has been outstanding despite the challenges of COVID-19 which brought the world to a standstill for about one and a half years.

“Tremendous progress has been made because Mr. President encouraged Public-Private Partnership and he also endorsed the 10-year Football Masterplan which is gradually being implemented.

“The Adopt-A-Pitch initiative brought back the Moshood Abiola Stadium in Abuja which was abandoned for 13 years. It was Alhaji Aliko Dangote who assisted us. The National Stadium is under rehabilitation and the N400m Chief Adebutu Kessington assisted us with could only handle three of the problem areas, yet 80 per cent of the job has been done.

“FG spent over N300m on Obafemi Awolowo Stadium while the Games Village in Surulere, Lagos is also receiving attention currently.

“We needed N21billion to fix it and so what we got (N400m) was about four per cent of the money we need.  The Sports Ministry supported the sponsor with over N200million. There were 17 problem areas to be tackled and COVID-19 affected the fortunes of some companies we expected to assist us. Standard time for a stadium before major renovations is 30 years. Surulere National Stadium is 51 years old. It was abandoned for 18 years. We are asking for N21b, which is $43m,” observed the minister.

Sports Ministry sources revealed that the average global estimate for stadium renovations range between $400m and $678m. For example, the Wembley Stadium was built at a cost of £798 million (£1.27 billion today, Real Madrid Stadium renovations cost $700m while the renovation of a 12,000 capacity stadium in Maldives will cost $25m.

The  Abuja National Stadium costs about $360m 20 years ago and only recently Julius Berger brought a bill of N1.2billion for the yearly maintenance which the FG could not fund.