A Monument of National Pride
For some reason I cannot explain, I deferred writing about my visit to the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos. Now that I have willed myself to put pen to paper, or rather, apply my fingers to the keyboard, I wonder if I will be able to let the vivid tale of that uneventful day flow from my fingertips. The memories seem to have receded with the distant past, stirred only last week by a reminder of Google photos that I took the pictures from my visit “this week, six years ago.”
I was a third-year student of the Faculty of Law, University of Lagos. I was interning in the Office of the Public Defender (OPD), an organization committed towards offering free legal services to people who could not afford legal representation. The OPD was quite close to the National Stadium, and on that day, we were idle. Student Interns were permitted to leave the office during break-time. Hitherto, we wanted to get snacks and soft drinks and pass the time, conversing about our faculty and lecturers and things we had learnt while interning. Solomon suggested that we took a walk. That led us to the National Stadium.
Presently, it still hurts to describe my disappointment upon my arrival. It was like returning in time to a scene set in the nineties. The sun cast a long shadow over its edifice, and there were quite a variety of worn-out cars, covered in fine layers of dust. Some of these vehicles were turned upside-down. They seemed to have been useless for quite an appreciable period of time. Auto mechanics had set up workshops. There were people loitering around the National Institute for Sports, and we could hear a 50-Cent song; which suggested that there was some activity thriving within the building. We began to make our way towards the stadium, three adventurers anxious for some experience worth documenting. We could not gain entry into the main bowl and walk on the pitch because the rusty gates were locked and try as much as we did, we could not open it. But we could see that the pitch was in a bad state. It was a dusty brown and the concrete walls were stained black with age.
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We trudged along, bemoaning the maintenance culture of Nigeria. This was the same theatre of excitement where the mathematical Segun Odegbami had dazzled the spectators with his skills. It was here the Green Eagles lifted the African Nations Cup for Nigeria in 1980 while Alhaji Shehu Shagari, the President danced happily, the wings of his agbada billowing. And it was in this stadium, Sam Okwaraji fell. Squatters had taken up residence in the stadium. I did see one of them lying on a mat, sleeping soundly, his head resting on his possession which was wrapped in a cloth into a ball. We found an abandoned automobile stretcher and took turns sitting on it and posing for the camera. I tried to remember where I had seen this vehicle before. The answer came to me in a flash. It was used to convey injured players out of the pitch, in one of the football tournaments Nigeria hosted. I believe it was the African Nations Cup, co-hosted with Ghana.
“They should have renovated this stadium,” I said, “especially during the 2009 Under-Seventeen World Cup which Nigeria hosted.”
“They chose to build another one in Abuja,” Elton-John replied.
It was on September 6, 2014. Given the benefit of foresight, I would still have been surprised that the same fate which befell the National Stadium at Surulere, Lagos would be the lot of the stadium in Abuja? It was quite frightening how the Moshood Abiola International Stadium slid into decay. It hosted the final match between Nigeria and Switzerland in the final match of the 2009 Under-Seventeen World Cup. Eleven years later, it had become a wailing ghost of its past. And if you should consider the sizeable sum of money which was spent erecting that stadium in the early 2000s and the number of years it functioned before it was abandoned, you would want to make an arrest.
This stadium was listed by the Sport Market as one of the fifty most expensive stadia in the world. In comparison, the National Stadium in Lagos fared better. It was quite gratifying that several mega churches rented the stadium in Surulere for their evangelical programs e.g. Pastor Chris’s Total Experience in 2001 before everyone eventually bid it farewell. The Honourable Minister of Youths and Sports, Mr. Sunday Dare pledged to see to the renovation of the Moshood Abiola International Stadium and the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos. We can only hope that he delivers on his promises.
In conclusion, the Government of Nigeria, at the three tiers, have always worn its dismal maintenance record as a badge of honour. When Public-Private Partnership could have given our public facilities a new breath of life, the public officers would rather bury their heads in the sand. Abandonment of public facilities does not portray us a nation of serious people. But are we really serious about anything? You only need to take a walk along Broad Street and see the bleak, brutalist skyscrappers, an epitaph to the oil boom era of the 1970s or visit the National Arts theatre which shared a similar fate. There, you have the answer.
