By Tosin Adesile
Akure is the largest city and capital of Ondo State located in the South Western region of Nigeria, with a population of 484,798.
A Nigerian Investigative Journalist, Tosin Adesile has revealed some of the rot in the Akure Stadium which has contributed to the state’s bad performance in various sport fiestas.
In this report, the writer paid a visit to Akure Stadium as a sports lover, but was shocked by the neglect, infrastructural decay and bad management that was evident in the stadium in particular, and the sport industry in Ondo State in general.
The Akure Stadium is one of the many government-owned Stadia in Nigeria that had turned to a monumental disgrace filled with crumbled edifices. The Stadium, a multi-use Stadium is located at Stadium road, off Oba Adesida Road, Akure at the back of popular NAO Supermarket.
The Stadium which has only one entrance gate is mainly used for football matches, basketball, and lawn tennis, and it also serves as the home stadium of Sunshine Football Club of Ondo State, a team in the Nigerian Premier league.
It currently has a capacity of 3,000 Spectators, but no VIP lounge, poor dressing room and non-functional Stadium LED display and electronic board.
When our Reporter visited there on a Saturday morning when Stadiums across the country are usually busy with lot of sporting activities, only the football pitch and the indoor sport hall was busy while other area looked much deserted.
This has really shown why Nigerians choose to watch foreign sport to the detriment of our local Sport which government has failed to garnish due to lack of will power to change the face of Sport in the country.
The decay at Akure Stadium puts youth development in serious jeopardy in the State looking at the high rate of unemployment and loss of football and other sporting talents due to unattractive facilities.
All the facilities within the stadium are totally dilapidated starting from hostels that houses athletes whenever the state is hosting any national or friendly matches/festivals. The buildings in the stadium premises are old, unfurnished with bad fittings. The windows are partially removed except few, torn nets and weak edifice which suggest the facility has been poorly, and barely maintained.
Most of the roofs within the premises are currently leaking with bad gates, very poor and dirty toilets.
About half the Pavilion Plastic Stadium seat are damaged,spoilt while there are no provisions for VIP booth that are available in other stadia like M.K.O Abiola Stadium in Ogun State.
Inside the Akure Stadium was three abandoned long buses not currently in use, which further corroborated wastages by the management of Ondo State Sport Council representing the Governor of the State.
From findings, the last time a major reconstruction was carried out at the stadium was in January 18th 1990 and the foundation laying ceremony was carried out by Navy captain Olabode George the military Governor of Ondo State then.
Since then, there had not been any major renovation for over 30 years.
Inside the Stadium, there is a damaged gate called Ise loogun ise that led to the Swimming pool which used to play host to lot of swimmers that kept the pool busy, but now, the water in the swimming pool is dirty, greenish and can conveniently transfer diseases to anybody who finds himself in the pool, but yet still, there are still young teenagers noticed swimming in the pool without any supervision or a manager which suggest the place had been deserted.
Most of the administrative buildings in the stadia were ruptured and bad and needs urgent renovation to stave off collapse.
There are locked rooms with Old office equipment like Typewriters, photocopy machines and Old newspapers.
Also, the roof over the generator house was fairly removed while the building looked weak and prone to collapse
Our reporter met a young boy called Emmanuel Ejim who manages the poor dressing room voluntarily in the pavilion, who said that was how the place had been since he started coming there.
He explained that the Sunshine football club of the Ondo State just resumed from break after a while their training just commenced.
Ejim explains the players do come to train in the morning on Saturdays and also in the afternoon.
Ejim who volunteers in the stadium said his dream is to join a football team so he can advances his career but he noted that the politics involved would not make them consider him.
From findings, it was also learnt that after months of owing the players, the government just paid two months’ salary recently.
Sunshine Stars Football Club (F.C)
The Sunshine Stars football club is a Nigerian football club founded in 1995 and based in Akure. They play in top division in the Nigerian premier league. The team is also nicknamed the Owena waves and Akure Gunners.
Sunshine Queens F.C
This is the women’s association football club in Nigeria founded in 2005. The Sunshine fc play in the topmost division of female football in the Nigerians women’s championship. The also make use of the Akure township stadium for their training.
Other teams in Akure include the Rising Stars and Rising Queens.
For quite sometimes, there had been team training disruptions and media wars from various segments due to what they perceive as the government’s lackadaisical attitude to the players’ welfare.
Recently, the bus driver of Sunshine Stars, Shola Adedifi complained of 23 month salaries owed by the Government.
Adedifi cried out. Saying despite the paltry 30,000 payment he is due for monthly, he was hardly paid.
He explained that former Governor, Segun Mimiko owed him and the current Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu also did. The father of six complained bitterly but it was learnt that the government paid two months in December.
In the 2021 budget of the state is the sum of 159 billion, but the details of how much was voted for the sport sector is still not clear and in the previous years, the stadium had remained the same without any development.
SUGGESTIONS
With the current state of things, it is advised that the government adopt this stadium as one of the key projects to engineer before the end of tenure while making sure it conforms to FIFA Standard Stadium.
If this is done,it would also encourage other States to take cue from this action, and increase sporting activities in the state with all its attendant benefits.