The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr. Sunday Dare, has emphasized that spending scarce resources to fix sporting infrastructure is more important than spending money to cut the grass around the Moshood Abiola National Stadium, Abuja.
The minister argued that merely cutting the grass would amount to not just gross waste of scarce resources, but misplacement of priorities.
The minister made the clarification against the backdrop of a newspaper report which claimed that the minister said a proposed amount of N81million was received by the ministry for cutting grass at the stadium.
The minister’s media adviser, Mr. John Joshua Akanji, described the headline of the story ws not only misleading, but incongruous with the content:
Akanji said in a statement: “It has become imperative and a necessity to clear the air on the misleading headline by a newspaper that the minister would spend N81 million to clear grass at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium Abuja. What the minister said was that it would be wrong and a misplaced priority to spend a huge amount as N81 million to cut grass when there are so many other competing matters that need to be attended to.
According to Akanji, the minister said: “A one-time clearing of the stadium would cost N81million. If I tell Nigerians that I would be spending N81million to cut grass so that there would be no rats and grass cutters, what do you think of their response? The same press would condemn such action as waste of money and misplacement of priorities.”
Akanji said the minister made the declaration at a public function.
“It is therefore unethical, mischievous, unprofessional and unfair to twist the statement to suit the interest of the writer.”
The Moshood Abiola National Stadium Abuja, which sits on a 43- hectare of land has long needed government attention until the minister convinced business mogul, Alhaji Aliko Dangote to rehabilitate it. Work is on-going and is expected to be completed early next year.