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National Stadium
Following reports about the deteriorating National Stadium in Abuja, the Minister for Youth and Sports Development, Barrister Solomon Dalung in an exclusive chat with THE SPORTDIVA on Thursday in Abuja said the maintenance cost of the National Stadium is N2billion ($5.8million) per year.

“The cost of maintenance of the national stadium in Abuja is 2billion for a single year, yes; it is 2billion naira every year that is the maintenance contract with the contractor.”

“So, that is the situation now, we have been managing from our overheads and trying to keep the stadium going, we have been managing the stadium, sometimes, when we have events taking place there, we mobilise intervention funds to try to update some of the facilities.

At the initial stage, findings by THE SPORTDIVA revealed that, after construction of the national stadium in Abuja, a sum of N1.2billion maintenance fees per annum was allocated to construction giants, Julius Berger, and after their departure, the maintenance cost per year reduced to N50million following the Federal Executive Council’s (FEC) approval of N300million per year, for the maintenance of 6 national stadia namely; Bauchi, Ibadan, Abuja, Kaduna, Lagos and Enugu.

Dalung further revealed that maintenance of the national stadium was not part of the sports ministry budget.

“The only challenge we have is lack of budgetary provision which is already in our 2019 budget, and it will be in concession for the Abuja and Lagos stadia, and we have gotten interesting expression of interest from serious-minded men and women in the private sector, and we are looking forward to getting the budget passed to complete the process.

“The writings in the media to me is an expression of concern, I mean you put a lot of money in the project and then you watch it deteriorate and it is deteriorating in a manner similar to the Lagos stadium,” he concluded.