The Honorary Vice President of the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, Bright Simons has strongly criticized Ghana’s mismanagement of its sports infrastructure and underscored the wider implications for national development.
In a sharp critique, Mr Simons outlined how a lack of proper maintenance of existing sports facilities has left Ghana reliant on foreign assistance, even from countries facing their struggles, such as Nigeria.
“My Nigerian friends who always argue with me about how tough things are there these days will have a bellyful laugh. That Ghana has only one internationally certifiable stadium.
“That this stadium too is so bad that Nigeria has to bail out Ghana. On the homefront, many people will misdiagnose this problem as part of some general mismanagement. For me, I always ask that we be SPECIFIC”.
Bright Simons, Honorary Vice President of IMANI Centre for Policy and Education
The Real Cost of Mismanagement
In dissecting the issue further, Mr Simons noted that the cost of maintaining a stadium is less than $1,000 per game, yet, Ghana’s football ecosystem has become so impoverished that even this relatively small amount has become a luxury for the National Sports Authority (NSA).
“Ordinarily, the football teams should just rent the stadia and pay the NSA enough to fix them. But the game is so broke that the teams cannot pay,” he explained.
Instead, the NSA and the football teams are left to share whatever meagre income they can generate from ticket sales—a sum that, according to Mr Simons, often doesn’t even reach $1,000 per game.
“It turns out that making even $1000 per game in Ghana is a lovely dream that rarely comes true. Except for Accra – Kotoko and a few games. Since 2012, the average income per stadium has fallen by 90%, and all the stadia struggle to make even $20,000 a year”.
Bright Simons, Honorary Vice President of IMANI Centre for Policy and Education
To add insult to injury, Mr Simons pointed out that Ghana has invested heavily in sports infrastructure over the past few decades.
According to him, in 2008 alone, the country spent $157 million to modernize its sports facilities, with over $1 billion dedicated to similar projects in the last 30 years.
Despite these staggering investments, Mr Simons noted that the core problems of underutilization, poor maintenance, and lack of sustainable funding have persisted, reducing the country’s sports infrastructure to a state of disrepair.
A Culture of Pretending to Solve Problems
Furthermore, Bright Simons expressed frustration at what he calls the “culture of pretending” that has taken root in Ghana’s sports administration.
He opined that instead of addressing the real problem of poor maintenance and the overall decline of sports, the government has shifted focus to building new mini-stadiums.
He noted that the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) allocated oil money to the construction of 32 mini-stadia, each costing between $1 million and $2.4 million.
“Separately, the government committed to 150 more mini-stadia in 2019. By 2023, it said 153 were done or almost done. It decided to up the ante in 2024, with a 100 more”.
Bright Simons, Honorary Vice President of IMANI Centre for Policy and Education
Mr Simons was critical of this approach, questioning why the government would allocate so much money for new projects when the existing infrastructure was in desperate need of attention.
He added that maintenance plans for these new mini-stadiums were either nonexistent or poorly thought out, with many already showing signs of serious wear and tear.
“Dozens of these astroturf pitches are now seriously dilapidated,” Mr Simons revealed, citing the Bukom pitch, which became a drying line within a year, and the Kasoa pitch, which has been plagued by squatters.
This focus on new infrastructure over maintaining existing facilities is, according to Mr Simons, driven by a desire to “pretend to solve problems” rather than genuinely address them.
The narrative around these projects, he said, is wrapped in feel-good slogans like “One Constituency, One Astroturf,” designed to distract the public from the real issues.
Behind this façade, according to the IMANI’s Honorary Vice President is politically connected companies, such as Wembley Construction and Blitz Engineering, secured lucrative contracts to build the mini-stadia, often financed by entities like OmniBSIC, part of the Jospong Group.
The Consequences of a Lack of Accountability
The crux of Mr Simons’ argument lies in what he refers to as “State Enchantment,” where the appearance of progress distracts from the underlying rot.
He noted that politicians and public officials have little incentive to fix these deep-seated issues because the Ghanaian elite and the public at large rarely hold them accountable for specific failings.
Instead, the country is locked in a cycle of “general lamentation” overbroad mismanagement, while those responsible for specific decisions remain untouched.
Bright Simons argued that real solutions require not just financial resources but sustained effort and political will.
“Fixing this and other such problems that have made football broke and killed all other sports require a lot of work, time, and energy on the part of sporting administrators and policymakers”.
Bright Simons, Honorary Vice President of IMANI Centre for Policy and Education
However, Mr Simons indicated that in a country where grand gestures are rewarded more than genuine problem-solving, few are willing to take on the “thankless job” of truly addressing the issue.
Bright Simons’ critique of Ghana’s sports infrastructure is part of a broader commentary on governance and public accountability in the country.
The failure to maintain stadiums, despite massive investments in infrastructure according to him is emblematic of a larger culture of waste and inefficiency in public service.
He posited that the focus on flashy new projects, rather than fixing what’s broken, reflects a national tendency to prioritize optics over substance.
“Why bother spending $200,000 to keep Baba Yara spick and span when you can spend $200 million on fresh mini-stadia?” Simons asked rhetorically.
The answer, he implied, lies in the political and economic incentives that reward superficial solutions over meaningful reform.
In conclusion, Bright Simons called for greater specificity in diagnosing Ghana’s problems and a collective effort to demand accountability from those in power.
Only by confronting these issues head-on, he argued, can Ghana begin to reverse the decline of its sports infrastructure—and, by extension, its national development.
READ ALSO: Creatives Urged to Focus on Creating Timeless Music, Not Grammys
