$100m bribe: Bash Ali lied, says Dalung

Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung, has cleared the air on allegations of corruption and injustice levelled against him as contained in a petition by former World Boxing Federation (WBF) champion, Bashiru Ali, to President Muhammadu Buhari.
Bash Ali had accused Dalung in collusion with top ministry officials including the Permanent Secretary of the Sports Ministry, Christian Ohaa, National Sports Commission Director General, Alhassan Yakmut and Grassroots Sports Director of the NSC, Dr. Ademola Aare, of trying to use their official positions to subvert his ambition to stage a Guinness Book of World Record Boxing Championship in Nigeria.
Ali also alleged in the letter that the Minister and the Sports Ministry officials in conjunction with a top ranking official of the Presidency are demanding a bribe of $100 million from his projected $750 million Pay Per View television profits from the Guinness World Record Boxing Championship for the fight to hold in Nigeria.
In defence of these allegations, Dalung explained that Bash Ali merely lied against him in his letter to Buhari.
“When Ali came forward with his proposed fight, I was so happy to hear it because I believe strongly that anybody with a good project, which will be self-sponsored, that will benefit the government and the good people of Nigeria, should be supported
“He wrote a letter to me and I referred it to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, who I directed to constitute a committee to advise the ministry on the viability of the project.
“What the committee concluded was that there is no guarantee of what Bash Ali intended to do about the fight, especially how the government can benefit from it. Even if we invest in the project, there is no guarantee of how we can recover our investment.
“The amazing thing was that he could not provide investors for the fight, all what he was interested was a letter of guarantee from the government. With this advice, we had to hand-off from going ahead and more importantly, government has no money to go into a project like that now.
“The fight is a private sector thing, which government cannot afford to take up. I could remember the Lagos City Marathon recently organised was taken up solely by Access Bank without any money coming out from the government. This is a kind of arrangement we want from any of the organisers who wants to stage sporting events in the country. Why would Bash Ali ask us to come and fund his project? He can go ahead to organise what he likes to do. We are looking forward to people who will come around to invest in sports in the country,” the minister said.
On the allegation of demanding $100 million from the Pay Per View Television profits, Dalung reacted thus: “After he was told about our position on this fight, he continued to send series of messages to me that I was an arrogant person. I want to put the record straight. I did not demand for any money from Bash Ali. Even looking at him, he doesn’t resemble a person that can give anybody $1,000 not to talk of $1 million or $100 million. I will advise that if he has $1 million, this is enough for him to organise his fight. Where will he even get the money?
“Concerning my people in the ministry who he said approached him for money, this is an interesting allegation which I will investigate properly to ascertain the truth of the matter and if anybody is found culpable, there will be serious and appropriate sanction. I would only want Bash Ali to come forward to prove his allegations and he too should know that if he is telling lies, we have appropriate law that we would apply on him.”