Olympian, Brown Ebewele, over the weekend in Abuja posited that Nigeria would not make any meaningful progress in the development of her sports if the country continues to use insincere, greedy and manipulative sports administrators especially at the level of the sports federations. Brown Ebewele Ebewele, a highly reputed athletics coach who rose to become a director and ultimately a commissioner of sports in Edo State, further said in a presentation he made at the Sports Reform Committee’s retreat that “ the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports should raise the level of monitoring and regulation of the sports federations as most of the chairmen have turned them into “personal gardens.” “Nigeria is the only country in the world that does not use her best in nearly all fields of public endeavor especially sports. The country will go to the Olympics and come back empty handed and the federation presidents will turn around and blackmail and blame the ministry for their failure. “For instance, the so-called ‘high performance centre’ in Port Harcourt is a fraud and if the ministry does not step in and the athletics body that provided the grant goes to see that contraption, the country may loose further support.” Adding, “Nigeria will not make any significant progress as long as the civil servants drive the sports development process.” In his presentation, Akinloye Oyebanji, former director NTA Sports said that the future of Nigeria’s youth should be the main focus of any sports development strategy and the nation should provide the enabling environment for our youth to create wealth with their sports talent. “There are models and standards all over the world that we can learn from. Early scouting and scientific programming should be key,” Oyebanji who worked for 30 years as a sports journalist said.
http://d19lga30codh7.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Brown-Ebewele.png
No comments:
Post a Comment