The Minister of youth and sport development, Sunday Dare has moved to clear the doubts of Nigerians over the rumoured unpalatable state of Abiola National Stadium as he revisits the June 12 celebration in the renovation of the football pitch while promising a greater renovation.
The minsiter explained that the processes and procedures are
at the final stage in which the contractor will move to site while pleading to the engineers to be patient as they are looking at almost 1.5 Million dollars of private funds with processes to evaluate such as the billeoun quantity, the best company that can do it, all the necessary procedures before moving to site.
“The pitch will come back very soon but you can also see that the pitch is functional, 70/80%, the grass does not represent functionality in a stadium. The swimming pool is working the indoor sports are working, the 60, 000 seats in the stadium are FIFA compliance, the tracks are okay, so we will get there very soon. What is left now is the football pitch, every other thing are back, lights, securities are back, the water system is back, it is just the football pitch and the floodlights, when we get that, the stadium is ready”
“This place is not lying shallow, before COVID-19, on the average, 21 activities took place , all of them sport related activities, all our National teams trained here before we go for any international engagement, I have come here physically, our practice pitches are okay.
Every other thing in this stadium functions, we only have to fix the main pitch of the main bowl.
We can see the seats, they are Okay, so this place is not lying fallow they are being utilised as much as possible. If you go to the indoor sport dorm, the rotunda shaped one, you will see that our kids from ages 5-10 are making use of it. You go to the basketball dorm, you will see people playing basketball”, Dare cleared.
“The football pitches are closer, we brought IOC President here with his team, 26 President of Olympics trust Africa were here and some ambassadors five months ago and we are proud to show them that this is a functional facility and again I say the grass growing aside is not functionality. Functionality is that there is light in this stadium, there is water, the facilities are working, the indoor sport hall has been fixed. Our veledrum have been approved by the international bodies to hold every cycling events in Africa and globally and also we are turning it into a multi sport hall, it’s fully functional.”
“All the coverings, there is no single hole or leakage. We have a functional nation stadium and I promise Nigerians that very soon, the football pitch that we have promised because we are leveraging on private funds and we have to go by thier own terms, this football pitch will come back alive and the stadium will host great matches that we know it of,” he promised
“I think, we see the interception of politics and football, unity, peace and progress embodied in sports and I say when you talk about the critical pillars and component of National development, sport must be consistently remembered as one of the strongest pillars of National development. So today, we see this monument standing tall to signify that even in our politics, we must have spirit of sportsmanship and we thank President Muhammadu Buhari for bringing this to our remembrance and we believe that this monument will further promote peace, love and unity in our country.”
