Dear Mr. Adams,
First and foremost, congratulations on your appointment as the Minister of Sports and Recreation. The people of Ghana are behind you and wish you the best as you take on this role in the new government when given approval.
There are many things to consider and many things to fix but as a concerned citizen, I have made a list to help you out before you enter office.
As you have already said you want to be a minister of all sports, this is key as other sports have been neglected over the years. Traditional sports like field hockey and boxing which once brought pride to this country have been neglected, our track and field athletes struggle for funding, and our basketball association is unable to take advantage of the initiatives by the NBA to grow the sport in Africa.
If you are true to your word, you can reverse this trend. I also request you be bold in supporting new and developing sports. If the sports associations have a clear plan and a realistic vision to grow the sport, I would hope you would take them seriously and help them grow, everyone starts somewhere and maybe these lesser-known sports can fly the flag of Ghana high one day.
You mentioned that the Black Stars will always have a special place in the hearts of Ghanaians. You are right, we are a football nation, that will never change but the relationship between the government and the Black Stars needs an overhaul. Your ministry will be responsible for mediating this relationship which requires a change in direction.
The first and most important is that the blank chequebook approach must change. The Black Stars cannot budget for tournaments and be planning to spend more than the total prize money, it cannot and should not happen.
In addition, the money won at the tournament should also be refunded to the Ministry and used for other things. We are past the point where the Ghana Football Association (GFA) needs support to run the Black Stars, if they cannot cut their coat according to their cloth the government must stop filling in the gaps.
The government should be committed to supporting youth teams and women’s football if the need arises but a brand as big as the Black Stars should be able to get the sponsorship and funds it needs to survive.
If the GFA cannot agree this and continues to request for money for the Black Stars I think they need to be more accountable. Using the OPAL principles if the GFA wants funding it should be held more accountable to the government and by extension the people of Ghana.
We also need to investigate past tournament expenditures. The last two AFCONs have seen Ghana take massive budgets, budgets that even exceed the potential prize money if Ghana had gone all the way, as mentioned above and repeated for emphasis. This is a complete misuse of state funds and is a very alarming situation. The GFA’s inability to draw up reasonable budgets is another reason why the tap must be turned off.
In addition, the African Games budget must be audited the expenditure on that event was massive. An amount of $15m was spent on feeding athletes and $195m on infrastructure but somehow, we still do not have a single stadium to play international matches. This expenditure must be one of the first things that ORAL looks at.
Speaking about football, our infrastructure does not match our stature. We are considered one of the leading nations in African football (regardless of our current performances) but we are unable to play in any of our stadiums because they do not meet the standards of CAF. This is an absolute disgrace and has to be one of the major priorities. As it stands, we have the 4 stadia used for AFCON 2008, along with the Cape Coast and Legon stadiums, this is a great base to work with and there should never be any reason for the Black Stars to look abroad for a venue. In addition, those built for the African Games must be maintained and not go the way of some of those built for the 2008 AFCON.
The Essipong Stadium especially has to be rehabilitated. The degradation of that venue is amongst the biggest sports-related failures of the last decade and there have been many. Letting such a structure go to waste after the AFCON is a huge disappointment and of all the stadia this needs to be the top of the priority list.
There are many more issues with our sector but the last I will touch on is visa fraud and athletes and officials absconding on official trips. This must stop and if any athletes decide to go missing the Sports Ministry should assist the host country in fishing these people out and facilitating their deportation.
Their actions hurt everyone who will come after them. Embassies will be less lenient, and our athletes will potentially miss out on later opportunities because earlier groups abused the opportunity to leave our shores to try and relocate. The Sports Ministry is not a travel agency and must not be used as such.
Allowing these official trips to be used as such hurts Ghanaian athletes and makes Ghanaian travellers undesirables to foreign governments. The Ministry must do its best to uphold and uplift the image of Ghana and allowing the misuse of their official capacity is a bad advert for the country and gives foreign embassies even more leeway to disrespect Ghanaian travellers.
With all this being said I do not believe this task is beyond you if you are ready to make hard decisions and stick to principles of truth and justice. I once again wish you the best and hope you will leave the sports sector in better shape than what you inherited.
Yours,
Susu Graham (a concerned citizen)
