Patrick Omorodion
15 November 2008
Last month, yours truly was in Nairobi for the 8th Africa Scrabble Championship which Nigeria like in previous years won in style at the Moi International Sports Centre in Kasarani.
One took time to learn about Kenya especially their athletics which was engaged in a an election to elect new officers for Athletics Kenya, the equivalent of our own Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN).
What one learnt is instructive especially for the managers of AFN who felt former AFN president, Dan Ngerem was not doing much but have become even worse themselves.
They once described the Lagos Half Marathon which the Ngerem administration introduced as a 'white elephant' programme which has no benefit for Nigerian athletes. Surprisingly the same marathon, though with a new sponsor now, is what the same AFN managers and so-called stakeholders are falling head over heels to be part of and even calling on the sponsoring company to increase the sponsorship money.
The AFN as it presently constituted does not know how much sponsorship money that accrues to it each how much more having an audited account which is presented annually at its Congress, that is if they even have a congress.
On October 9,2008 Athletics Kenya went to the polls to elect new leaders but the incumbent president, Isaiah Kiplagat was re-elected as he defeated former multiple world record holder and three-time 3,000 steeplechase champion, Moses Kiptanui by 55 -8 votes.
What thrilled this reporter about the Athletics Kenya's AGM was the manner the treasurer of the federation, Josela Kinyua gave a detailed account of their income and expenditure for the past year, 2006/2007 season. The treasurer told the congress that Athletics Kenya save more money than it spent in the outgoing season even though the income dipped from about 87,000,000 Shillings in 2006 to 80,000,000 in 2007.
The breakdown of the report showed that the a bank which sponsors the federation's marathon doled out 5.3 million Shillings (about N8.5 million). This is not up to one third of the money Ngerem got for the first Half Marathon AFN organised but he was vilified.
The present board are even getting more than that but have they told Nigerians how they spent the money for last year's event like Ngerem did in his time.
Apart from Stanard Chartered Bank which sponsors Kenya marathon, other sponsors like Kenya Breweries, Kenya Pipeline, Nike and Chiba among others support Athletics Kenya, not only because they do very well but ostensibly because of their openness and accountability.
Even grants gotten from the world athletics body, IAAF, 11 million Shillings in 2006 and 8 million Shillings in 2007 were all stated. From Nike alone, they got 49 million Shillings in 2006 and 45 million Shillings in 2007.
Surprisingly, they equally got support from a sister federation, Athletics Sudan which doled out about 290,000 Shillings while other local companies put in a total of a little over 20 million Shillings. All these were stated in the treasurer's report. When Ngerem got about N30 million from Nigeria Breweries for the novel Maltina Relays which took place across the six geopolitical zones in the country, rather than commend him, the stakeholders criticised it.
The man was not perturbed though as the company commended him not only for the good organisation of the competition but for his audited account on how the sponsorship money was spent.
Since he left, how many sponsors are left with the AFN.
Even the money they get, do they account for it. The money the present board met in the coffers was spent within the twinkle of an eye and they have been going cap in hand to get money for their programmes. Most times they never get any financial support from either the private sector because of poor accountability nor the sports ministry because of paucity of government fund and so athletes are left to languish like we saw before the Beijing Olympic Games which turned out a disaster, except for the lucky medals from Blessing Okagbare and the women's relay.
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