SMCD 54: The true end of an era

OVER the last four decades, one legislation which has withstood the test of time and the numerous sector ministerial changes for the development and promotion of sports in Ghana is the SMCD 54.

This decree was signed into law in 1976 by the then Chairman of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) and Head of State of Ghana, General I. Kutu Acheampong, who also then doubled as the Commissioner of Sports.

However, the two real proponents of the Decree then were the late Lt. Col. Maxwell Patrick Simpe-Asante (rtd.), then the Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Sports, Ministry of Youth and Sports (he was appointed to the position in 1974) and the then Executive Chairman of the National Sports Council, the late Mr. Robert Thompson Orleans-Pobee, a former Headmaster of Adisadel College. It is said that Simpe-Asante was a former student of the late Orleans-Pobee and the Adisadel College.

It is amazing that almost every Minister of Youth and Sports, from 1976 to 2016, had set up one committee or another to attempt the review of this legislation to bring the terms in conformity with modern trends without much success, till the last Parliament of the Fourth Republic passed the nine hundred and thirty-fourth (934) Act – Sports Act, 2016. For the records, there have been twenty-five Ministers in all over the forty years.

It has always been said that the SMCD 54 was tailor-made for the late Orleans-Pobee as the Chief Executive and also the Chairman of the National Council: designated as the ‘Executive Chairman’; whilst an Assembly of Sports, which was expected to meet not less than four times in a year, was only advisory, consultative and deliberatively body.

I met the late Orleans-Pobee when I was a Teaching Assistant at the Land Economy & Estate Management Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and pursuing a master’s degree. He had come to the Department for a meeting with the Head of Department, the late Prof. Ebenezer Acquaye and late Dr. Daniel Duodu Yamoah, a lecturer in the company of his Chief Administrative Officer, Alex Asiedu on a problem that the National Sports Council could not grapple with; and after the initial discussions I was invited into the meeting because the late Prof. Acquaye thought I could hold the key to the issues that they were describing. Funnily enough, my responses impressed the Executive Chairman. That ended my master’s degree and my foray into sports business profession when I was offered a job as the Assistant Stadium Manager for the Kumasi Sports Stadium in 1980; and as they say, the rest is history.

One of the things I introduced with his support was the use of students of the KNUST as ticket sellers and checkers during matches; and the fact that I stopped a ‘Mallam’ who was paid allowances per all matches played because of his magical powers to stop the rains from falling for us to have a rains-free match days – what they used to call ‘ways & means’.

Admittedly, I can say without any equivocation that I owe my baptism into sports and how I have turned out as a sport business consultant to the late Orleans-Pobee.

My whole essence of this article is a certain coincidence which I find fascinating and sad.

The new SPORTS ACT, 2016 (Act 934) was gazetted on 16^th December, 2016, exactly 40 years after the SMCD 54 was promulgated in 1976, to repeal and bring an end to the era of this law and after 25 Ministers of Youth and Sports, who during their tenures of office tried variously to repeal it without success for one reason or another. Quite fascinating, don’t you think, even as I wonder if the Sports Act could endure another 40 years and more without another repeal?

My sadness stems from the fact that the first quarter of this year, 2017 saw the demises of two legends, if LEGEND is the appropriate word to use to describe these two gentlemen, or better still two giants of SPORT in Ghana.

The two ICONS, by my definition, are the late Robert Thompson Orleans-Pobee, the first Executive Chairman of the then National Sports Council under the SMCD 54; and his late student, Lt. Col. Maxwell Patrick Simpe-Asante (rtd.), a true and true sportsman and sports administrator.

I am reliably informed that the late Simpe-Asante was an active sportsman in his youthful days; becoming a Physical Education teacher at the Mount Mary Catholic Teacher Training College in Somanya, before he was enlisted in the Ghana Armed Forces in 1965 as the Staff Officer in charge of Physical Training, Sports and Games of the Army, Navy and the Airforce.

Mr. Orleans-Pobee died in Accra on March 6, this year at the age of 89. A Santaclausian (as past students of Adisadel College in Cape Coast are referred to) himself, joined the staff of the school in 1950 and served in a variety of roles. His tenure as headmaster was from 1963-1974.

After leaving Adisadel, Orleans-Pobee became the Principal of the Specialist Training College at Winneba and then the National Sports Council.

In 2010 during the centenary celebrations of Adisadel College, Orleans-Pobee was unanimously acclaimed and decorated the Santaclausian of the Century. In the same year, he was recognised for his outstanding contribution to sports development in Ghana by the Sports Writers Association of Ghana (SWAG).

How sad that finally, when the SMCD 54 is repealed, we should lose these two fine gentlemen whose tenures at the helm of Ghana sports saw significant changes to the way we had been organising and developing sports as a people and a nation.

Truly, an END OF AN ERA – SMCD 54.

 

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