OPINION

By Immanuel Ben Misagga

It has been a big sporting season for Ugandan sport. At one point over the past week, I was spoilt for choice as whether to watch the 2023 Fifa Women’s World Cup hosted by Australia and New Zealand, the Netball World Cup in South Africa, the 2023 FIBA Afrobasket championship in Kigali, Rwanda or the men’s and women’s African boxing championships 2023 in Yaounde, Cameroon.

For some reason, several key match-ups collided in the hours of 2:00pm to 4:00pm, thereby leaving me with no chance, but to keep rotating between the SuperSport channels.

I must say I have really enjoyed being spoilt for choice because Uganda featured consistently in the various tournaments.

Unfortunately, (to be precise, predictably), all our teams did not reach the tail-end of the tournaments, but they punched above their weights to gain international recognition.

On one hand, the national female basketball team, the Gazelles, commendably reached the last eight of the 2023 FIBA Afrobasket, where they were agonizingly eliminated by Rwanda in a nail-biting encounter best remembered by the hosts’ Luganda-laced celebration of Ani Yabagamba.

Around the same time, the She Cranes were defying odds to become Africa’s supreme side after finishing fifth at the Netball World Cup.

On the other hand, our hastily-arranged men’s and women’s team for the 2023 African Boxing Championships didn’t disappoint and finished the tournament with seven medals, two silver and five bronze.

With those honours, the boxing team also returned with sh161m cash prizes, a clear indication of return on investment.

Amidst all this, I paused to imagine why the National Council of Sports (NCS) provides crumbs to these sports federations and never invokes the value-for-money rule to justify budgeting and expenditure.

To put this into perspective, boxing, basketball and netball stars returned home with some dollar earnings which, unfortunately, will be subjected to Income Tax by the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA).

On the other hand, football, which takes the lion’s share of NCS’ sh47b annual budget, hardly brings any returns from the expensive trips abroad.

An age-old Luganda adage says that Ekiswaaza omugagga kwe’kusesema entula, which literally translates that a fraudster posing as a rich man is exposed by vomiting cheap food.

In this case, football, which gets at least sh17b, has nothing to offer in return on investment by the Government.

For the $45,000 boxers brought home from Cameroon as well as the bonuses won by the She Cranes and the Gazelles, URA must have had a field day taxing it yet in reality, the Government of Uganda contributed virtually nothing to the success.

This further exposes the Government’s limited effort as far as the development of the national boxing, basketball and netball teams are concerned.

So, here we are, taxing the over-achievers while providing a pass for the football’s underachievers.

The bigger picture is to build the next generation’s superstars with the capacity to transcend the economy.

In boxing, a Floyd Mayweather boxing fight brought Las Vegas to a standstill due to his popularity and made dollar numbers only comparable to a top NBA team’s 42 games of the season.

In Uganda, we may not have a Mayweather-kind of person, but we have the resources to build a next global superstar, if we put more emphasis on the sporting prospects.

Seeing how our national boxing, basketball and netball teams are flaring in the midst of adversity gives me hope that should the right people manage sports, we could be world conquerors in a few years.

Unfortunately, most people in sports administration spend most of their effort in clinging on to power at the expense of building sports disciplines.

For instance, at the Fifa Women’s World Cup, we saw how African teams have progressed, with Nigeria, Morocco and South Africa making it to the knockout round.

Football-wise in Uganda, we are still stuck in amateurishness and matters are not helped by the fact that Fufa president Moses Magogo is milking Fifa’s promotional campaign of women’s football by creating a top-flight women’s team to conquer the competition. He does this because he knows where Fifa’s financial priority is.

So, to even up the scales, there is need for URA to analyse where the Government invests in sports without returns. Institutions like Fufa should be taxed on what the Government gives them.

It is really unfair for sports disciplines like netball and basketball to be heavily taxed yet the Government had no input in their success and achievements.

The writer is SC Villa president emeritus