Aruna Clamours for Direct Budget Disbursement to Federations

*Rues Nigeria’s absence at WYC

The bottlenecks faced by sports federations to secure funds for their programmes continued to generate reactions as Africa’s number one table tennis player Quadri Aruna has charged the federal government to disburse budgetary allocation directly to sports federations.

The Portugal-based athlete, however, lamented the absence of the Nigeria team at the just concluded World Youth Championships (WYC) despite being listed among the qualified teams for the global tournament.

Specifically, Aruna believes disbursing the funds directly to the federations would help them to execute their programs as well as attend more international tournaments.

“I think there should be an end to the idea of sports federations running to Abuja to get funds to attend international competitions. Most of the presidents of the federations have been funding their federations’ programs through personal funding and despite this going on for years, nothing seems to change in the country. Most federations apart from football have not been attending international events because of the usual no funds from the Ministry of Sports Development. There are no grassroots programs in place across all federations and even some of them that managed to organize events are not being supported by the government,” he said.

“In wrestling, Daniel Igali has been funding the sport while in table tennis, Barrister Wahid Oshodi and the Vice President, Adesoji Tayo and others have funded most of the programs of the federations personally from their pockets and it is time the government released funds directly to the federation and they can monitor how the money is spent annually. I don’t fancy the idea of always running to Abuja to seek funds and meeting a brick wall should come to an end,” he added.

Specifically, Aruna lamented the inability of the Nigeria team to compete at the WYC in Slovenia despite picking one of the 32 tickets available across the world. “It is pathetic that despite qualifying through the continental qualifiers through the financial support of meaningful individuals in the federation for the government to now sponsor them to the world championships became an issue and how do we then improve our players if they don’t compete globally? I am not happy with this kind of situation and I hope when the federations are getting their funds directly, they can plan themselves for this kind of event,” the 2023 African Champions said.