Idowu, Ali Applaud Lagos As Premier Lotto Lagos School Athletics Final Holds On Saturday.

Impressed with the quality of organization of this year’s Lagos Premier Lotto Athletics Championship, Chairman, National Academicals Sports Committee (NASCOM), Yemi Idowu and Former national athlete, Yusuf Alli have hailed the Lagos State Government for this laudable initiative.

The NASCOM boss, who was at the district six qualifiers on Wednesday at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, believes this kind of programme would positively help to groom quality athletes for the country.

  “It is a very good programme and this is the second year that we are having this and I am witnessing it. First of all, we have to be thankful to the sponsor, Premier Lotto for sponsoring and assisting again this year. 

Lagos state has many programmes and this is one of them and they are all linked. At NASCOM, one of the things we are interested in, is instead of sitting at the federal level, we like to come and see what is going on at the state level. Lagos is a state that we are very proud of what they are doing. 

They have a very good programme on ground and they are taking advantage of the good facilities they have provided and the calendar has actually worked out excellently for them,” Idowu said.

  For Alli, who is also a technical officer of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN), programme like this would help to unearth new athletes. “This is fantastic and this is what we have been talking about. 

Taking sports to the grassroots is development. When you take sports to the students, you gain a lot and I just pray that this Premier Lotto Championship will continue for a very long time. 

I am very happy about it and I want to see more editions. If you have this kind of tournament every other week, the students will come and participate and this will afford them the opportunity to be discovered,” the national record holder in long jump said.

For the grand finale scheduled for Saturday, March 8, Idowu predicted that athletes discover would surely be part of the next National School Sports Festival.

“At the final we are going to be identifying and select athletes that will go to the national school sports festival. Obviously that will build up momentum for school sports festival. 

I don't know what other states are doing but I know Lagos has this good programme,” the NASCOM boss added.