The National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos is under sieged. Reports have it that men of the underworld have invaded the moribund sports city and stole electrical cables.
News and Sports reports that within two weeks, the thieves stormed the sports complex to perpetrate their nefarious act.
In their first outing, the thieves who came calling last week carted away cables and batteries of the generator behind the Indoor Sports Hall of the stadium.
Since they succeed in their first outing, the thieves came again over the weekend to steal the batteries of the generator and cables serving the Main Bowl of the Stadium. The generator has been out of service for ten years.
This prompted the Stadium management to embark on renting of generators to power facilities at the Indoor Sports Hall to enable those who have paid for it’s use for basketball clinic to continue their programme
Both incidents were not discovered until some days after the robbery; Immediately after the discovery, the Stadium management decided to go round and take inventory of their facilities to determine the level of the
Tongues are wagging as to how the thieves operated successfully twice in spite of the fact that there is a Police Station at the Stadium and a private security guards outfit employed by the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
Apart from this, people are wondering how the cables were easily carted away since it was not what one or two persons could carry as it involved loading them in a vehicle to be moved away which has raised a lot of questions.
When our correspondent wanted to know the level of the vandalisation from the Lagos Liaison Officer of the Ministry, Miss Nkana Mbora, she said that she was still taking inventory of the vandalized items and will not make any statement now.
In its reaction, the stadium management as part of efforts to avert another vandalisation has begun restricting the movement of people in and out of the stadium.
As at the time of filling this report, they’ve already given marching order to some people from coming to the stadium till further notice and even threatening them with arrest.
However some of those affected by this order have advised the management to look inwards and rig jig their security
network positing that a situation where private security personnel employed by the Ministry are being owned close to eight months’ salary arrears creates room for compromise.
