Candid segment in sports

A weekly overview of Gambian sports impacting on national development, by Kebba Yorro Manneh - Social Commentator

Kebba Yorro Manneh, Educationist & Social Commentator

The brouhaha in our sports will continue so long as we do not sit as stakeholders to see eye to eye. The blame game and suspicion will be the order of the day.

Reference to my earlier exposure on controversies in sports and reiterating dialogue as the way forward, apparently, I am not being listened to as that counsel would have remedied the fiasco in our sports sector these days.

Therefore the way out of this quagmire is for the Executive Secretary of the National Sports Council who must not allow the grass to grow under his feet as the CEO of the August body that is constitutionally mandated to regulate all sports not to handle things with kids gloves of monotonous press conferences and media outbursts but tackle things headlong in an inclusive national stakeholders confab.

I hope there is food for thought for this at the luxurious offices of this all important institution which I always lament lack the competent officials to dignify the very importance of that August body. This is so because how can one imagine the subsets of that all important body challenging and understanding its authority through non compliance with the dictates of the previsions of that August body. 

Many cases in points but the most recent ones are the turmoil of our participation in the Maputo games and the media scandal that was sparked off therein to make a mockery of our stance in sports not to talk about the pandemonium generated by the many press conferences that have not yielded any positive results.

Let me reiterate here that it is amazing that our sports continues to be dragged more and stuck in the mud regardless of the utterance of putting all hands on deck as the power play and blame game syndrome is perpetuated by our sports handlers from the embryonic stages to the zenith of sports administration. 

Why can’t we see reason to jaw-jaw rather than war-war over something that can bring a lot of development for the very precious youth cohort that is the bastion of our nation?

Recent mishaps in this sphere call for affirmative action if we are to make progress in the domain and make our mark of the national and international levels. Are we ready to give into this?     

Without doubt, this is the way forward hence I propose the following as the way out of this predicament.

1. Organise a national dialogue beginning at the villages, districts, regions to graduate on to a national confab where strategies could be mapped out to see us thrive in our sports.
2. Arrange a reconciliation meeting with all the active players to see eye to eye whilst the dialogue proposed in one is ongoing.
3. Set task forces in administration, finance, technical, medicine and other relevant stakeholders departments to discuss issues pertaining to their thought.
4. Collate all the information for a dossier to emerge as the road map and subject this to scrutiny at a validation retreat for a more comprehensive document to emerge.
5. Organise a donor confab to solicit funding for the implementation of our projections.

Obviously, when this is resorted to the end resultant effect will always augur for our sport process through which we are to develop our youth cohort which is the bedrock of our society. Needless to say the adage “society take care of it youths can rest on it laurels for prosperity” hence the passion and concern I have for the sector because overall as an educationalist I have labored to educate a lot of youths most of whom have excelled but the less fortunate ones are still about to be propped up hence my obsession. Hope it is understood in that perspective to avert indictment.

Source: The Voice Newspaper