Solomon Dalong, Nigeria’s sports and youths minister, says he will not accept bribes from administrators seeking to circumvent due process or curry undue favours. Dalong told the Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN), FCT Chapter, in Abuja Wednesday. “Corruption has indeed destroyed everything we do in this country and that is why we think that the best way to approach it is to come out and wage war against it. Once we are able to minimize corruption in the industry, we will go far. The best way to do it is to provide transparent leadership. The body language of the leader should be very clear. The major predicament is when a minister declares that he wants to fight corruption but yet brown envelops are smuggled into his resident at the midnight, there is no way he can effectively wage the war,” Dalong said.
As part of the Nigerian contingent to the 2002 African Nations Cup, Dalong said they got $400 each out of $7,000 approved by the sports ministry for the athletes, lamenting the corruption in the system.“Those bringing brown envelops have vested interest in the system. It is either that they have strangulated the system and want to be protected or they are planning to beat the system. We will try to make the difference. We will insist that anything meant for a particular purpose should be utilized for that purpose,” he said.
Dalung explained that he was among the federal government delegation to the 2002 Africa Nations Cup where they were promised $7000 only for the football federation to pay them only $400 short-changing them to the tune of $6600.
Dalung pointed out that stakeholders who try to settle those in authority are people who have skeletons in their cupboards.
“Those bringing brown envelops have vested interest in the system. It is either that they have strangulated the system and want to be protected or they are planning to beat the system. We will try to make the difference. We will insist that anything meant for a particular purpose should be utilized for that purpose
