Mitchel Obi is an authority on Football and Sporting issues generally. He has paid his dues. He has been around forever. That is why many simply describe him as a Sports Personality. He is also an Encyclopedia of Sports. He was our guest a few days ago on City People TV Instagram Live Chat. Below are excerpts of our chat.
So how has it been in the last 3 months?
Well, we have been operating like hermits. You know by keeping yourself inside without knowing what is happening outside. It’s good to see a bit of sunshine in Lagos in the past one week, maybe it’s due for the rains to come but with the Vitamin D being encouraged for one to have. Its good to enjoy the breeze and keep off the crowds.
How has the pandemic lockdown affected sports generally?
Radically, it has changed the whole concept of our sporting profile and calendar. Importantly the biggest sport events have been postponed. So the postponement has been under scrutiny. Since the postponement, you can imagine the dimension it would have on other sports.
For me, it’s a phenomenal adjustment all round. It was never envisaged even when people spoke about it, the duration was not calculated. Now we are not even seeing an end. And we are saying that if we can’t fight the virus, the Olympics next year will have a big question mark. They talk about the new normal, this is way off the new normal.
So how has it affected football?
If the Olympics which was set for next month was postponed till next year, football which happens to be a big business to some clients because they have managed to get yet some of the big leagues in Europe where you had high casualties. I think they are beginning to understand the virus and how to approach it. They have accepted it has one of their modus operandi and have adjusted their football calendar to it because it’s big business.
Can you imagine the UK without the premiership or Spain without La Liga? Even the attention and revenues it generates for them annually can’t be pushed aside. I think some of the countries that cancelled their leagues are beginning to have a rethink when they found out that the virus was out of manageable conditions. But now they get to see that you can play behind closed doors and use technology which becomes the new fact of life.
If we get to the level of 5G. We would be on another dimension in reach. As they say, any problem constructed by the human mind can also find a solution therein. If we can’t totally eradicate the virus, then we can manage it like the HIV/AIDs and all that. This has been out of the calculations. It’s a fundamental hit on the way we do things and perhaps, its own legacy will remain. I’m beginning to see a shift towards sanitation, like washing of hands that normally, ordinary people don’t usually do, keeping away from crowds and countries having the consciousness to improve the health facilities.
When those in power discovered that they can’t enjoy their power without a healthy frame, so they start building hospitals that would take care of people without going over our borders.
The movement across borders has become very tedious. You can imagine going to Abuja and you are asked to come 2 to 3hours before and the stress of sitting and waiting.
Abroad, some matches have resumed and we now have simulations. How do you see all of this?
I can say that it’s not and can never be the same thing. The game is a spectacle, and that spectacle includes those who are watching it and those who are acting it. If one aspect is not there, then it’s not complete. The spectacle has found a second level of attention which is television. The television has its own eye to represent the eye of the majority.
So everyone is watching through the eye of the television. It’s not the same thing as watching through the stands or VIP area, shouting and cheering and going home with the mind that you have just experienced a moment of good sport. So behind closed doors is good and tolerable. It took quite a while before the players could adjust to the fact that they are playing alone in the stadium.
But I think now, they are more focused on the game. The standards are beginning to bounce back as long as they keep respecting the protocol. In Germany, fans paid to have a caricature of themselves on the stands so that gave a double presence in the stadium. It was a revenue boost for Borrusia Monchengladbach, two days after they came up with the idea, over 10,000 fans signed up paying in full. When there is a will, there must be a way.
I guess we must have lost so much money, Do you have an idea of how much football and sports have lost?
Let’s take the Olympics for example, the postponement itself has caused the host Japan about $5 billion. Then the process of adjustment is still ongoing. There were programs that were fixed for certain times like venues which were not permanent and those they were going to hire like cars, busses and different levels of facilities that were needed to make the competition go for that particular period of time were signed and sealed. For the postponement, you have to go into a fresh agreement.
The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach said it was for them easier and less cumbersome for them cancelling the games than postponing. But now they are thinking of adjustment but if the fans are not there, how are we going to set up the Olympics to ensure that it goes on without spiking the virus.
People have to be more pragmatic and realistic now to ensure a minimal level of infection of the virus. Most of the Japanese think the Olympics will not hold. They said the 2021 Olympics will still retain the name Tokyo 2020 so that some of the materials and things produced will not go to waste. That has been the resolution they have adopted.
We were to have our national sports festival in Benin, Edo 2020 but the way things are going and the election coming up, and the federal government saying that their consideration isn’t towards sports now and with the numbers rising, I can’t see the sports festival happening till November. But will November be feasible for Nigeria’s biggest sports events? Then you can imagine the cost of hosting over 10,000 athletes in Edo state. So you can imagine how much the government has spent though they have not told us what they have spent. They refurbished and built new sports facilities, paid for hotels and even built new hotels to accommodate more people so it is almost the same thing like in Tokyo.
Sport is no longer an individual enterprise. It’s big business and even the government and those who are ready to venture can venture into it.
What are the lessons that we should learn from all these?
First, we must start building our own treasures here. In the sense that we have to start looking at the basic things, we have to do because they would come a time that we won’t be able to go out given the lessons we have learnt. So we have to improve on our health facilities which is cardinal. Players won’t have to be scared of injuries when they play because the hospitals might not have the kind of facilities to treat them. So health is key and a starting point within the sport frame.
The second lesson is to be confident in our people. Let them start thinking of how to find solutions to the virus. Some countries were exporting masks. We have so many schools with different courses so they should be encouraged to provide solutions to the virus. We should have companies we can rely on to provide on short notice, masks, ventilators and some other facilities.
The third lesson is political trust. We need leaders who will react appropriately and timely and not wait. Why are people so cynical about the number of cases reported, it’s because the leadership itself has not taken the vital step in reaching out to the people to make them understand things like it happened in Britain to Boris Johnson the public health system was what treated him. And he says he owes them a permanent debt because he would have been history. Can we say that about our government and leaders? When some of them have Covid, they vanish and reappear after 14 days and then we praise them. The bigger picture is that we need to start getting our own things right and those are the things we need to manage.
At the sport level, there are too many lessons to be learnt. For example, when building a stadium, you should be thinking about a stadium with a crowd. Your stadium must be highly TV-friendly so that when production companies come in, they won’t have to start building or making new things that would make production stressful. The sitting arrangements have to change. The dimensions have to change even in the VIP and hospitality suite which is where the money is.
If I asked for the political vision of where the country would be in 2030, everybody will reloud the same old things. Some of us were part of the 2010 master plan. We said by 2020, Nigeria would have been in a place to host the Olympics and have more than five gold medals etc. The farther we go, the backward we have been. We ask ourselves where we got it wrong. But I want to believe we can still do the right things. As they say, righteousness exalts a nation. We need to do what is right gradually and we are beginning to do that, thanks to the youth minister who is trying to see people that would help improve the stadium in Abuja.
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