Former Somali NOC boss urges Govt to draw-up National sports budget

Former Somali National Olympic Committee president and current honorary president, Abdulkader Ibrahim Ga’al AKA Abkow, has called for the federal government of Somalia to include national sports budget into the country’s budget of the year.

Speaking at a news conference in Mogadishu on Tuesday, Mr. Abkow accused the country’s past governments of doing nothing in terms of sports development, adding that only the Somali NOC and its member federations
with the help from the international sports governing bodies mainly from FIFA and IOC have been financing the development of Somalia sports for nearly 3 decades.

“For so many years our ministry of sport had existed only by name—I don’t know why such ministry exists if it doesn’t want to spend money in the development of our sport” the top Somali sporting official noted.

“I would like to call for the new Somali president and his prime minister to work for the inclusion of special budget for the sport development into the national budget of the year” Mr. Abdkow said.

“In this country people are mostly sports-loving and as everybody knows our sport has played a key role in reconciliation, peace building and fighting drugs. Our sport succeeded to do all these without getting a single dollar from Somalia government, so this time the government must invest in our sport” he added.

In January 1991, Somalia collapsed into chaos and since after, the country’s sport had been going without a governmental support as all governments in the country during the period didn’t give much attention to the sport in this country whose people are mostly sports-loving.

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