Nigeria @65: Crumbling Stadia & The Crisis Of Sports Infrastructure
By AUGUSTUS ISICHEI
AT 65, Nigeria’s sporting landscape tells a troubling story. Once the pride of Africa, the nation’s stadia now stand as decaying relics of past glory, symptomatic of a broader culture of neglect and short-term thinking. From Surulere to Abuja, the decline of facilities paints a grim picture of wasted opportunities and shrinking ambitions.
Ghosts of Glory: From Continental Hubs to Empty Shells
The National Stadium in Surulere, Lagos, once hailed as one of the best in sub-Saharan Africa, is today a shadow of itself. Though it has undergone partial renovations, large sections remain derelict, overtaken by small businesses and rodents. Teslim Balogun Stadium, still in use, teeters under the weight of poor maintenance.
The Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja, built in 2003 at immense cost and prestige, has fared little better. Though corporate interventions brought temporary facelifts, its training pitches, athlete hostels, and floodlighting remain largely dysfunctional. Elsewhere, stadia in Enugu, Ibadan, and Port Harcourt are under-utilised or abandoned altogether, while games villages across Aba, Afuze, Ibadan, and Abuja stand idle — monuments to failed planning.
Sports editor Christian Okpara summed it up starkly: “After all these years, Nigeria has only one stadium of international standard. If anything happens to it, our teams may play abroad.”
A System Built to Fail
The decay of Nigeria’s sports infrastructure is no accident. Stakeholders describe it as the product of a culture of “event-driven renovations” without long-term planning. Facilities are built to host tournaments, then left to rot. Unlike Morocco, South Africa, or Rwanda — countries that maintain their venues to attract global competitions — Nigeria builds, neglects, and rebuilds at crippling costs.
Football analyst Monday Ahanmisi argues that without a national masterplan, Nigeria’s sports system will remain broken: “At 65, Nigeria should not struggle with decaying stadia. We need a deliberate framework, not fire-brigade repairs.”
The neglect extends to grassroots sports. Once vibrant communities and schools now lack playgrounds. Games villages designed to nurture future champions are shuttered, erasing pipelines for talent discovery. “You cannot produce champions without functional facilities,” Ahanmisi warns.
Lost Potential, Urgent Choices
The consequences are glaring. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, cannot boast more than one FIFA-certified international stadium — the Godswill Akpabio Stadium in Uyo. National teams lack a consistent home ground, often forced into a nomadic existence. Meanwhile, hunger for sports among youth collides with a wall of inadequate infrastructure.
Sports editor Pius Ayinor describes it as “poor, shameful and disappointing”: “Other countries deliberately maintain their facilities. In Nigeria, we build but neglect maintenance. The result is visible decay everywhere.”
As Nigeria marks 65 years of independence, the state of its sports facilities mirrors a wider national problem: grand ambitions undone by poor execution and absence of a maintenance culture. The lesson is clear. Without urgent investment, sustained public-private partnerships, and a deliberate strategy, Nigeria risks not only losing its place on the continental sports stage but also failing the millions of young people whose talents deserve more than crumbling concrete and overgrown pitches.
