President Buhari names Solomon Dalong minister of sports

With the announcement of the ministerial portfolios on Wednesday morning by President Muhammadu Buhari, Solomon Dalong has been sworn-in as the Minister of Sports and Youth Development.

Barrister Dalong was born on the 26th of September 1964 in the town of Sabon Gida within Langtang South Local Government Area, Plateau State. His father is a retired Director of Health of the Taraba State Civil Service.
Dalong had his primary school education at LEA Primary School Sabon Gida from 1971 to 1977. Dalong joined the Nigerian Prisons Service in the early eighties as against the usual tradition of joining the military where he rose from the rank of a Prison Assistant and rose to the rank of Assistant Inspector of Prisons.
He enrolled to study Law at the Law Faculty of the University of Jos in 1991, spending a whole nine years before bagging an LLB as a result of crises that rocked the Nigerian Universities calendar. He proceeded to the Nigerian Law School, Bwari, in Abuja, graduated in 2000 and was called to the Bar in 2001.
He worked as the Personal Assistant to Chief Solomon Lar who was then the Adviser Emeritus to President Olusegun Obasanjo. This job lasted until 2003.
In 2004, he took up an appointment with the Faculty of Law of the University of Jos as a lecturer. In 2007, he was appointed the Chairman of Langtang South Local Government Area.
As chairman of Langtang South, he also served as the Plateau State Chairman of the Association of Local Government Chairmen of Nigeria (ALGON).He served as Legal Officer II in the prisons headquarters prior to retirement as a trained attorney.
In Langtang South, Dalong is referred to as “the man who brought colored roofing sheets.”
However, he does not seem to have any experience in sports or sports management.
In the past, many sports ministers had focussed mainly on football, leading many to call for the creation of a separate ministry for other sports.
It is not yet known what Mr Dalong's vision for the sports ministry would be.
The 51-year-old would also be overseeing youth affairs. A cursory search of his name on social media sites Twitter and Facebook showed he does not have accounts at the time of reporting.