The chairman of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Mallam Shehu Dikko, has said that the MKO Abiola National Stadium, Abuja, will wear a new look soon, as plans are in the pipeline to bring it to a world standard that every Nigerian will be proud of.
He said that apart from the pitch, the NSC is also working round the clock to see that every part of the stadium is brought back to life as the Very Important Persons (VIPs) sides, the lounges and new tracks will be fixed to restore the pride of the gigantic edifice which was built and commissioned by the former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration in 2003 and hosted the All African Games the same year.
Dikko, who was speaking with journalists on the sidelines of the final of the Abuja All Stars Veteran Football Tournament between New Karu Veterans and Karu Veterans, said experts were in Nigeria to take samples of the sand, the grass and the water at the main bowl to come up with a solution that will solve the problem of the pitch once and for all.
“We are trying to put a new pitch here. We’re already in the process. We want to put the best pitch here; the best in Africa is what we want to put here. That’s why we have brought people that have done one of the biggest pitches in the world. They were here.
“They look at the stadium, they took the sand. They took the water to Europe to test it. To make sure that okay, let’s see the kind of water we have, this is the kind of grass that can grow here. They are coming with solutions that will give us a long-standing pitch that all Nigerians will be proud of.
“And then, apart from the pitch, the National Sports Commission is also working to bring the stadium back to life. We want to expand the VIP, fix the lounges and everything, the new tracks so that we can have a proper stadium that we can be proud of and that will be our true national stadium,” Dikko stated.
The MKO Abiola National Stadium has been in a state of disrepair and, by FIFA standards, cannot host any international competitions like World Cup and AFCON qualifiers and CAF football tournaments.
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