The National Sports Commission (NSC) has described as work of mischief makers reports that it spent N1.2m to open a facebook account stressing that the story was misleading and a calculated attempt to put the commission in bad light.

Director of press, NSC, Mr Tony Ohaeri told Leadership Sports that the commission spent no kobo in opening any facebook account. He said the idea to open a facebook account for the NSC was initiated by the ICT Unit of the commission with the aim of using the facebook as an interactive forum to connect Nigerian youth around the world with the NSC and its mission.

“Opening of facebook pages does not attract any form of payment and the NSC’s facebook page was opened at no cost. But you can advertise a facebook account if you want it to attract followership. During the course of briefing the immediate past minister of sports and chairman National Sports Commission, Alhaji Yusuf Suleiman, he directed that more aggressive approach be adopted in projecting the facebook page and directed that the facebook crew accompany him to visit all athletes and their coaches who were in various camps across the country in preparation for the 10th All African Games. He also directed that the crew should attend the 10th All African Games in Maputo to update the page on happening during the games,” Oheari said.

He said upon the directive by the minister, a memo dated August 2, 2011, N902, 000. 00 was approved for a two-man team to visit the various camps. This according to him, was to enable the crew interact directly with the athletes and their coaches and obtain firsthand information from them for the facebook page. “This immediately translated to a tremendous increase in the followership of the NSC facebook page within one week. following the success of the advert. Another memo dated August 26, 2011, N300,000.00 was approved to step up and extend the advertisement of the page, purchase Internet Modems with a month additional subscription.

For clarity, the initial $200 paid for advertisement was privately funded. While the sum of N902, 000.00 and N300, 000. 00 were approved for the facebook page crew to accompany the minister on his visits to the various camps of athletes and their coaches and purchase of internet moderns with one month subscription respectively. Out of this mount, the sum of $1,000 was to advertise the NSC page on facebook.”

http://leadership.ng/nga/articles/15092/2012/02/02/we_did_not_spend_n12m_facebook_%E2%80%93_nsc.html