The Chairman of the National Sports Commission, Mallam Shehu Dikko, has stated that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s vision is for Nigeria to have at least six fully functional, FIFA-approved stadiums across the country.
Currently, Nigeria struggles to maintain more than one stadium that meets FIFA standards due to the poor condition of many facilities nationwide.
According to Dikko, this situation will no longer be acceptable under the new vision of the Sports Commission. The renovation and proper maintenance of Nigeria’s sporting infrastructure is a key pillar of the Commission’s mandate moving forward.
“As a PPP expert, I have an understanding of what to do to create a Proper framework that will be able to bring back the National stadiums to life and not just for Sports.
“We have to create something around it to give us 24 hours of activities within the stadiums through the Private sector where revenues will be coming in to maintain and get them active”.
“In those days we used to build stadiums as if we were building parade grounds. Just built pitches, tracks and seats and nobody was thinking about what to add to the stadium like hotels, restaurants, the parks and the likes”.
“But I can tell you that the lands that are available within the Facilities of the National Sports Commission is over 2500 hectares across the Country. Those lands will be used to be the bait to bring the Private sector to utilise the land and get the sporting facilities to work”.
“The focus we have overtime is to have at Least one stadium with full compliance with FIFA regulations in each of the zones, so that we have minimum of six stadiums across the country at every point in time, ready to host any international tournament within two weeks of notice”
“These are the kind of visions we have and things we should be able to deliver, but the immediate priority will be to get the Abuja stadium working and develop a framework too for the National stadium in Lagos to start working much better,” he said.
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