The Chairperson of Nigeria Women Football League (NWFL), Nkechi Obi has advocated a separation between sports practitioners and business administrators for the sector to develop faster.
Sports247.ng reports that the articulate head of the NWFL is of a view that Nigeria is lagging behind in terms of sports development due to the failure of the country’s officials to ingest proper business acumen into their activities.
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She, however, noted that early signs of a fertile turnaround of focus and impetus have started emerging in the return of the National Sports Commission (NSC) and emergence of Mallam Shehu Dikko as its chairman.
Nkechi Obi added during an interview on Arise TV, “They are now focusing on the economy of sports; but you need an army of professionals to do it. You need lawyers, accountants, investors and real estate developers. You need all these people. You don’t necessarily need sports people.
“That’s why I always tell people that there is a difference between the business and the practise of sports, just as there is a difference between the business and practise of medicine. Which is why you have a hospital administrator running a hospital; while the doctor, cardiologist and all medical experts can practise their speciality separate from the administrator. What we don’t have in sports is that separation.”
Nkechi Obi concluded by emphasising the need for a separation of sports business from administration in order to ensure that Nigeria starts making huge strides that would yield better results for the country on the continental and global terrains.
“We have to separate, in quote, church from state. Now, we see that it is happening, and I am happy about that. Let’s separate the business of sports from the practise of sports … but we will still address issues affecting both of them in such a way that there will be a convergence,” the female football mogul stressed.
She then buttressed the need for continuity and affirmed that any decision in the future that revives the ministry of sports and scraps the NSC would be like the Biblical analogy of ‘going back to Egypt’
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