Instead, he suggested that they need to use the National Sports Industry Policy to find ways of finding new sponsors to help them meet their financial obligations. Dare was meeting with secretaries from all of the country’s different sports federations in Abuja, and he declared that every sport now has to be looked upon as a business.
The minister continued by saying that the secretaries need to tell their sponsors that there are many elements of the program that could benefit them, with government policy behind it. He pointed out that the ministry won’t be asking them for details of how they spend the money that they source in this way and said that he hoped this would allow grants to be established for Nigerian athletes.
It seems unlikely that sports will disappear in Nigeria, as they make up such a big part of the country’s entertainment sector and provide activities for so many people. This can be seen in the number of people who take part in sports or watch them across the country. In 2019, a GreenHunters report on soccer in Nigeria confirmed that there are around 100 million active soccer fans, although the most popular players were global superstars such as Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, rather than local players.
