Funding shows federations are priority - Ogwel

You have probably seen hair-raising tweets from athletes about how much in terms of compensation they are getting from government for representing their country.

Last week, Uganda Table Tennis Association (UTTA) president Robert Jjagwe reportedly said he missed the National Council of Sports (NCS) stakeholders dinner "as a matter of principle" as he does "not agree that NCS has money for a party when it does not have money to give to our national federations for actual sporting activities."

At the dinner, NCS shared their annual report in which they revealed that Shs13.4bn (78 percent) of the Shs18.3bn allocated to them for the last financial year July 2021 to June 2022 was transferred to federations.

NCS general secretary Bernard Patrick Ogwel feels that criticism of their priorities is misplaced.

"First of all, 73 percent of our budget is going to federations and that shows that they are our priority.

Secondly, reward and recognition of federations is part of sports and we have seen many of these federations hold their own award dinners.

"We had over 90 percent attendance from federation leaders and the mood was lively. It is an event which we can also use to motivate those who are not performing well to get their act together," Ogwel said in a press briefing on Wednesday.

Also in the light of Uganda Ludo Federation being awarded as one of the best performing bodies of 2022, Ogwel decried the continued bickering among federation leaders and the accusations that NCS is promoting many small games as national entities.

"There is no law in this country that asks us to degenerate a federation as small or classify another as big.

By description they are all national and Ludo as far as we are concerned are African and World champions," Ogwel said.

The distribution 

However, in terms of financial distribution, government seems to have classified the federations. Fufa received Shs8.5bn last year and they have their own lobbying and a Presidential order to thank for that. 

But that was still more than the other 37 federations, including Ludo which got just Shs8.76m, combined. Thirteen (13) federations received nothing.

The funding for the financial period that ended in June 2022 was no guarantee that the federations would have their amounts increased in the current financial year despite the budget growing to Shs47.1bn and Parliament ring-fencing at least a threshold amount for each federation.

We so far know that Shs22bn has been released to NCS for 2022/23 thus far making the ring-fencing order harder to implement.

Big beneficiaries

Also in the absence of a funding policy, NCS understandably has to prioritize which national teams to fund.

The sub-sector is still left to this openness in lobbying at NCS level to determine what each sport gets.

Some times it works as it did for sports like badminton (Shs468m) and hockey (Shs379m) which received more funds - for hosting various events and travelling to Ghana (Africa Cup of Nations) respectively - than some priority sports like rugby (Shs354m), athletics (Shs276m) and boxing (Shs244m) in the previous financial year.

NCS Allocations 2021/22

Transfers to federations (78 percent) - Shs13,431,269, 000

Goods and services (13 percent) - 3,328,403,000

Salaries (9 percent) - 1,608,542,000

Total - 18,368,214,000

Federations Break Down

Fufa - Shs8.5bn

Over Shs500m:

Fuba - Shs614.9m

Netball - Shs566.5m

Over 100m

Badminton - Shs468.7m

Hockey - Shs379.2m

Rugby - Shs354.4m

Athletics - Shs276.7m

Boxing - Shs244m

Skating - Shs218.8m

Swimming - Shs185.1m

American Football - Shs166.7m

Uganda Paralympics - Shs149m

Weightlifting - Shs117.1m

Table tennis - Shs106.2m

Above Shs50m

Climbing - Shs81.3m

Volleyball - Shs81.1m

Golf - Shs80m

Lacrosse - Shs75m

UOC - Shs67.2m

AUUS - Shs63m

Woodball - Shs60.1m

Taekwondo - Shs57m

Tennis - Shs56.3m

Above Shs10m

Judo - Shs47.1m

Archery - Shs42.1m

Cycling - Shs39.4m

Gymnastics - Shs38m

Pool - Shs28.4m

Squash - Shs20.7m

Zurkaneh - Shs20.6m

Scrabble - Shs19m

Kabaddi - Shs18.8m

Handball - Shs16.9m

Wrestling - Shs14m

Baseball - Shs13.3m

Below Shs10m

Ludo - Shs8.7m

Fencing - Shs3.5m

Bodybuilding - Shs1m