On October 13, the Sekondi Sports Stadium came back to life.
For the first time in seven years, the stadium hosted a competitive, elite-level football match: an Olympic Qualifier between Ghana’s Black Queens and Mauritius.
In the end, the Queens put seven past Mauritius.
A fitting result to mark the reopening of a stadium many had not used in nearly a decade.
Much has changed since it was last used.
The beams, weak compression rings, weak trusses, and corroded roofing sheets have all been replaced.
Now, they spot an unmistakable coating system, ostensibly to prevent deterioration in the manner of the former state.
The old plastic seats, previously covered in dust and whatever else its recent users left on it, have also been replaced by brightly-colored new ones that,
From the West Stand, East through to the North Stand, every single seat has been removed and replaced.
Approximately twenty-five feet from the stands, lies familiar, green-pigmented plants joined together by their stems and held in place by the soil – the playing surface.
Before last week’s opening, the last memory fans had of the pitch was an insect-infested, brownish grass. Like crops on farms in the dry seasons, whose owners have relocated to the next village in search of water: nutrient-deficient and neglected.
Now, however, it has a familiar green look to it, even if not entirely Bermuda, Kentucky, or Perennial grass.
The scoreboard has been fixed too.
But that is as far as it goes.
They only fixed the broken parts without addressing the main challenges with the stadium.
Concerns.
The stadium is still is very limited in terms of what it can host.
It can host track and field events, but the results recorded will not be recognized internationally because the stadium does not meet required standards.
The tartan tracks, for example, are not internationally certified. So do not expect Benjamin Azamati or any of Ghana’s elite-level athletes to be running on it.
What it can do is host inter-school events in the Sekondi Takoradi Metropolis like it always has – even then, there is a limit to the disciplines that can be held there.
There is no space for basketball, volleyball, or tennis.
Next year will be the 20th anniversary of the Sekondi Sports Stadium.
For a renovation this close to the anniversary, it would have been prudent to consider fixing these issues once and for all.
Maintenance and sustainability
If anything symbolizes the poor maintenance culture at the stadium, it is the forty rooms that were marked as hotel spaces, but have not been touched since the stadium was opened in 2007.
For nineteen years, the forty rooms have been empty.
The NSA could have rented the rooms out as offices, but chose not to.
The internal bureaucracies of the institution have often been blamed.
But it is hard to take these seriously.
After all, it is not as though the process for its lease was ever set in motion.
Across seven different governments and a million appointees to its head office and the Sports Development Officers (NSA Regional Heads), nobody did anything about the quietly sleeping 40 rooms.
Probably because the empty rooms did not speak loudly enough.
Or if we pretended the media had not made enough noise to draw the NSA’s attention.
At the moment, there are no plans to furnish the rooms and use them for the intended purposes.