The political season is heating up for the December Presidential and Parliamentary polls and two front runners, NPP’s Dr. Bawumia and the NDC’s John Mahama have been engaging various sectors of the economy on how they would transform Ghana should they win power. Would they do the same for sports?
Not many people put a premium on political promises but I would prefer that, I mean, properly articulated policies in manifestoes or such presented at media interactions to anything else, especially the uninformed, insult-laced discourses. On sports development, the two main candidates haven’t shown anything comprehensively cogent.
Last night, however, John Mahama made that attempt (video attached) as he engaged the media. On the surface, I like what he said but I would’ve wished he went deeper on issues of sports financing, infrastructure, training of coaches and administrators; and critically interrogating the integrity, governance, and accountability issues of our sports.
I make the same demands of the NPP who creditably has supervised the construction of some decent sports infrastructure but the maintenance of same has been poor, to the extent that, in some cases, outright lies have been told in Parliament on the renovation of Essipong Stadium for instance. It’s complete disrespect of the people for such barefaced falsehood to be peddled.
The government has promised to convert Borteyman into a sports college but it’s hard for me to seriously believe that when the present Winneba Sports College has no decent football pitch, nothing befitting the learning institution. When the sports college supposedly training personnel has no modern training facilities in 2024, you don’t go promising a new one.
Ghana must be better in sports development, and the standards not be seen through political lenses but by international best practices. Good intentions or nice talk for sports is not enough. I wish the political parties would delve deep into the real issues undermining sports with proper, open interaction and a will to truly change the status quo. Don’t tell me about the notice to SWAG to make inputs somewhere.
By Jerome Otchere
