Believe me or not Derek Phillips is my father.He has worked for nigeria for the african games and they have not even now payed him what he was due to be paid. If Nigeria gets the commonwealth it will be a total fowl up.
gabrielle phillips
scottishexpat, on May 12 2007, 05:10 PM, said:
A pretty damning indictment... from the Sunday Herald in Scotland.
t's a country in which catastrophic management is at its peak'
Exclusive By Natasha Woods
Abuja promises slammed by major events expert
Comment
ABUJA WILL not deliver on its promise of distributing £4.4 million of funding across the Commonwealth if the Nigerian capital beats Glasgow to win the right to host the so-called Friendly Games in 2014, according to a leading expert on the organisation of major sporting events.
Derek Phillips, who acted as executive consultant at the All-Africa Games in Abuja in 2003, told the Sunday Herald the bid team's pledge to pay out almost £63,000 in sports development funding to each of the other 70 voting members of the Commonwealth was as good as worthless.
"I'd virtually guarantee you they'll not pay out all that money," he saidd. "If they are saying they are going to send money to all the different Commonwealth Games Associations, then I'm sorry, that's never going to work. They might promise they will pay, they might send out letters saying they recognise they have to pay, but - when it comes to cash in a bank account - God help those waiting.
"None of this has anything to do with Nigeria as a country and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with the Nigerian people - many of whom are marvellous - but the system of government and civil service does not allow payments to be made outside the country without having to go through the most incredibly complicated series of signatures and permissions.
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"And there is always a document that hasn't been signed and the excuses go on and on. I know there are still many suppliers from the All-Africa Games who haven't been paid and that's almost four years after the event."
Last week, when Glasgow and Abuja formally presented their bid documents to the Commonwealth Games Federation, it seemed the Scottish city had been out-muscled on the financial front as Glasgow's support package of preparation and training grants to competing nations came in at around £50,000 each.
However, Phillips, who was the accreditation manager at the 1998 Fifa World Cup and the Sydney Olympics, and who is currently the UK venue manager for the forthcoming IRB Rugby World Cup, claimed cash was just one of the many concerns he had over Abuja's ability to stage a successful games.
"If you ask me whether Abuja, in terms of sporting facilities, could put on a Commonwealth Games, I'd say yes. But in terms of the infrastructure of the city and the country and their capacity to manage any level of spectator attendance, the answer is undoubtedly no'. It's a country in which catastrophic management is at its peak."
Few would be better placed than Phillips to speak from experience. The Scot, who insists he has "zero" ties to the Glasgow bid, was initially contacted by the organising committee of the All-Africa Games in 2001 when they asked him to create an accreditation department for them. Once the scale of their limited experience in the field became apparent, he was asked to become their executive consultant for an event attended by athletes from 53 nations.
In that capacity he went to both the Manchester Commonwealth Games and the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics as an observer for Abuja. During that time - and in his subsequent role as IT director at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, which was also held in the Nigerian capital - he travelled in and out of the country more than 50 times. And when he left for the final time it was with the impression of a city and a country ill-equipped to host one of the world's largestmulti-sports events.
"Nigeria is a world expert in last-minute management. At the All-Africa Games they were still connecting the water mains in the athletes' village when the competitors had already been there for a week. They had no idea how to control the power supply and one day there was hot food, the next cold, because someone hadn't put any oil in a generator.
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Jim...naughty naughty! 
Stop winding up the Scots!
I was trying to convince James (the little so and so) that there are more things to life than hanging on something that is lost...Just like when NZ was knocke out of the RWC quarters this year, over it within the day, NZ hosting the next RWC! 
Looking up already! 
