Festival of facilities?

The 14th edition of the National Sports Festival in Nigeria is shaping up to conform with all the dire predictions of embarrassment of facilities,empty theatres of competition and chaotic organisation. Not even the frenzied etmosphere that characterised Saturday's belated opening ceremony could lure neither the egregiously sedative local inhabitants of the host city Abuja, nor the sports adherents from beyond, to the festival. A handful of spectators had on daily basis watched proceedings at the various venues, a stark contrast to the throngs of crowd that made the last edition in Benin City, Edo State, a festival never to be forgotten. For the motley crowd of food vendors and hawkers of merchandise that usually engender a small economy at events of such magnitude, it has not been a worthwhile endeavour. "I wonder why people no come watch games for this festival self, abi dem no know?"queried a visibly worried T-shirt and face cap seller who, instinctively, had expected a new wave of emmigrants typical of the size that graced the 8th All Africa Games barely seven months ago. Not a few have,however, attributed the low level of spectatorship to poor,if not total lack of awareness campaign for the festival and the soaring cost of living in the highbrow capital. Unlike during the All Africa Games when the organisers rolled out an appreciable number of buses to ferry spectators free of charge to the sports arena, people have had to find their way to the stadium this time around. The Ministry of the Federal Capital Territory[FCT] did not have to lobby before the sports authorities in Nigeria could bequeath the hosting rights of the 2004 National Sports Festival to Abuja. Afterall, a new National Stadium, reputed to be one of the best in the world, had just beeen built to host athletes from around the continent, and it was only proper that the infrastructure was soon utilised by the people who had sacrificed a lot for it to be a reality. Also accommodation of athletes and officials was not to be a problem as there already exist a multi-billion naira housing facilities at the Games Village. Perhaps the FCT ministry simply went to sleep thinking it already had all it takes to host the 'best ever games'. Deji Omotade,Permanent Secretary in the FCT ministry, who is also Chairman of the local organising committee agreed in an exclusive interview with nigeriasports.com that the LOC had faultered in term of public sensitisation. He explained:"Our local organising committee was inaugurated only on March 24 and we had to work in-house,know what we want to do,how we want to do it...also look at funding arrangement before we started going out.So this was why awareness creation came late. "But inspite of that, during the past week or so a lot has been achieved and I think awareness is quite high for the festival." The Abuja 2004 LOC,according to Omotade, has received an appropriation of N800 million from the Federal Government to finance the festival.But critics contend the huge nature of the budget has not reflected much on organisational activities. Indeed there had been complaints of poor feeding by athletes at the Games Village; journalists have been unable to make use of the communication facilities at the media centre 9 days into the festival' collation of results is haphazard; and events have had to start behind schedule. "Things like accommodation,feeding,security...when you have large influx of people into the city are things people normally take for granted,"said Omotade, adding that "they are very very important and it takes a lot of efforts and energy to put necessary arrangements in place." He further maintained that the athletes are well fed while claiming most of the supposed lapses identified were blown out of proportion.
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