Despite offer of assistance from ANOC

Super Exclusive

All that is needed to host beach games is a sea of water and sand, something that Nigeria has in quantity

By Ed Emeanua

Nigeria declined the Association of National Olympic Committees’ (ANOC) invitation to replace Indonesia as host of the 2023 World Beach Games championship forcing the World Organization to cancel the event altogether.

This was moments before the ANOC announced the cancelation of this year’s Games scheduled to be held in Bali next month following the withdrawal of the Indonesian city as hosts.

With no time to find a replacement, the organizers of the World Beach Games had to cancel the Games outright.

Nigeria’s refusal to accept the right to host the event came as a huge shock to observers as the consensus was that the West-Africans has the structures and the means to easily stage the event successfully despite the short notice.

Lagos State is currently in the process of commissioning its newly built ultramodern beach sports plex, while Aqua Ibom, Rivers and Cross Rivers States represent other Beach sports havens capable of pooling together with Lagos to host the Games in Nigeria.

Moreover, Beach Sports does not particularly require lengthy construction of sporting sites to stage. The availability of mostly open, seas of sand, a natural endowment that is already known to be plentiful in Nigeria, is all that is needed to stage a successful beach Games.

Again, as a tourists attraction and haven, the above mentioned cities in Nigeria boasts of the availability of standard hotels, communication, and the comparative urban roads network needed to stage the events.

To top all that, the ANOC was willing to assist Nigeria financially to be a successful host following the disappointing manner of Indonesia’s withdrawal of its commitment to host the event.

Above all else, the Games was an opportunity for Nigeria to showcase its tourism and related industry and afford targeted businesses, hawkers, vendors, and other organizations in the tourism industry, to make quick gains and to prosper.

Indonesia’s sports minister Dito Ariotedjo on Wednesday indicated regret for the cancellation adding that the budgeting process to host the event was tedious, and that the sum of 446 billion rupiah ($29.71 million) had been approved for the event but was still being reviewed by his country’s finance ministry.

In Nigeria’s darkest alleys of financial wastage and mismanagement that is blighted by unchecked corruption and vice in high places, $29.71 million is just the type of fiscal resources that routinely vanishes overnight into the pockets of crooked politicians, government stalwarts, and their co-travelers.

Billions of dollars have been known to disappear in Nigeria at random, only to be followed up by lame inquisitions whose outcome have unfailingly been an announcement to the such that, though the money is truly missing, its looters remain and would continue to be unknown and elusive politicians, magician government workers or ghosts, and invisible criminals who cannot be located, found or arrested.

Should the rogues be so glaring, then the announcement that would accompany such a revelation would be that the missing money cannot be found; case closed.