Elected leaders can outdo their own lip service

The worst virus eating local sport is neither HIV/Aids nor Covid-19. Those two can managed medically. But lack of purposeful and result-oriented leaders whose visions are well-stated but never implemented is as chronic as many diseases we have lived with for eternity.

In my journalism career spanning over a dozen years, I’ve been lucky to cover local every sport, attended tens of elective Annual General Meetings and flipped through a zillion manifestos.

The men that desire to be our elders are ambitious and yet selfish. Otherwise, I am lost for words to explain chairpersons and presidents whose terms of office climax having accomplished an ignorable percentage of their manifesto.

Half way their terms with no immediate visible success stories, these leaders’ just causes turn into blame games and finger-pointing affairs after they start viewing their disciplines in monetary rather than sporting terms. 

Building a sound reputation becomes a thing of the past as they snatch and grab anything within reach for own benefit with previously set goals; transparency, development and audited books of accounts taking the backseat.

Having started out their reigns like those of the Rome’s greatest emperors enjoying early bit-part positives and grandeur, our leaders are forced to step aside and often with threats of legal recourse on fraudulent charges and misappropriation of funds. Having come into power as darlings, they are pushed out as criminals frowned upon by their own fraternity and the sporting world at large.

In my book, no sport is spared. Not even the hugely successful athletics and motorsport where stakeholders inject more than the leaders. But I find it hard to blame our previously passionate elders who start out by pouring all their personal wealth into making their respective sports the biggest and best associations.

In a cut-throat universe where man believes its every man for himself and God for us all, it is always going to be a matter a self-reflection, a look in the mirror and a desire to deliver against all odds that we must inculcate into our culture.

God, give the people in the corridors of power some heart because saviours and miracles remain a far cry.