The new appointed Minister of Youth, Sports and Social Development, Ibrahim Issah Bio, has said that the standard of Nigerian sports has nose dived as he recognised that Nigeria best time was at Atlanta Olympics where Nigeria won two Gold medals.
The Minister made this statement on Tuesday at the National Stadium Surulere where he inspected facilities at the sports complex.
While speaking with sports journalists, Bio said even football that placed Nigeria on the world's map has not been doing well, thus there is urgent need to revive sports through regular competitions and identification of talents and training athletes to be rated among the world's best.
Bio, observed that there is strategic planning for sports development in Nigeria as he promised to have a blue print which would explain what exactly the country wants in sports.
He said most of the Nigerian athletes are ageing, hence the reason he would ensure that the National Sports Commission delve into aggressive grassroot sports development.
He said the National Sports Commission would identify with specific sports such as Swimming, Athletics, Boxing, Weightlifting, Taekwondo and Football because they have natural advantage as Nigeria could discover talents that could give honour and grace to the country.
He said there are abundant talents in Niger- Delta where Nigeria could discover good swimmers and Adamawa where Nigeria could identify talents who could be the best in long and short distance runners.
"There has been no strategic planning of what Nigeria want to do with sports in accordancee to vision 2020, thus there is need to have a blue print which would explain what exactly Nigeria want in the area of sports" said Bio.
"Apart from planning,there are no plans for grassroot sports development and talents identification.Nigeria's athletes are ageing and there should be a plan to discover new and young athletes through regular competitions.Athletes discovered would be in the National Sports Commission elite athletes programme with assistance to embark on training tours.Falilat Ogunkoya, Chioma Ajunwa were discovered through grassroot programmes"
"The Acting President has dirceted all his Ministers to hit the ground as quickly as possible because the remaining part of this regime is so short and want them to make impact.We want to delve into sports funding because of the provision for NSC budget is not enough to address the problems of sports.
"The NSC will go for an aggressive marketing of variuos funds and try to generate external funding for develoment of sports and funding to host competitionswith the aim of identifying talents."
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