‘Nigeria too Poor and Hungry to go to the World Cup’ – Minister of Sports

Someone please inform me when we finally have a sports minister in this country!

Nigeria’s Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung, has been known for making unimaginable howlers, however, his latest interview with the
Voice of America, Hausa Service takes the cake for cluelessness.

Nigeria desperately needs to play at the 2018 World Cup having missed out on next year’s Africa Cup of Nations, but bizarrely, the man who ought to be championing the cause is ridiculously the same man kicking against it.

Dalung, in all his wisdom, said loudly to the world, that Nigeria does not need to attend the next World Cup holding in Russia because the country is “poor” and the competition “corrupt!”

As reported by Vanguard, Dalung said:

“That competition (World Cup) stinks of corruption; Nigeria is too poor to waste money on it and Nigeria would never win the trophy”.


“The cup that we can win is the African Cup of Nations. There is nothing again that will take us to another man’s balcony in the name of the World Cup. We already have the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics. For these, we can attend such meets,” he fired.

“But I am opposed to the World Cup. We don’t agree to it. Conspiracy in the World Cup is too much,” he said in a statement that could upset the world governing body, FIFA. He was not done.

“There is the issue of bribery and favouritism. There is also the issue of corruption before you are even given the hosting rights. We are here suffering from hunger and we don’t have money for such things. That is why, even if we try many times, once it gets into the politics of the game, we can never win.

“That was why this year, we had to tackle him (FIFA President, Giani Infantino) and we said, ‘you , Infantino, if you win this election, you have to give us a position. If not, we shall not agree.’ And you see , by the grace of God, he even picked an African as his Secretary-General. That means he has started taking honey and rubbing on our lips. That means that one day, we shall get to really lick the honey.”