Nigeria: Athletics Boss Calls for Open Sports Festival

Duro Ikhazuagbe

29 June 2011

The President of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) Chief Solomon Ogba has called for the National Sports Festival to be thrown open to allow the best of the country’s sportsmen and women to be part of the fiesta.

“The National Sports Festival is our own Olympics and so the best athletes in the country should be allowed to participate in it. It should be an open affair and not restricted as it is at the moment,” said the former Delta State sports commissioner.

Chief Ogba, who revealed that the restriction placed on the festival was causing several states to abandon any athlete that has participated in three previous editions, warned that unless there was a change of policy, the glamour that will attract corporate Nigeria to it may not be there.

“Right now, so many athletes who ought to be in Port Harcourt now getting set for the festival are roaming the streets because they have been thrown out of employment by the various states that previously engaged them. It is should not be so. It is only when our best converge at the festival that we can begin to attract good sponsors to the festival. This is our own Olympics and our very best ought to be part of it,” stressed the athletics federation boss.

He singled out Delta as perhaps one of the very few states that have very good policy of assimilating past sportsmen and women into the administrative arm of the state work force.

“In Delta, there is a deliberate policy that ensures that athletes get educated while competing for the state and when they cannot continue, they become useful in the areas of their discipline.”

He therefore charged the leadership of the National Assembly to pay attention to the development of sports because of its potential to improve the image of the country.

Chief Ogba, who stated this during a state dinner in honour of athletes and officials at the three-day All Nigeria/Cross River State Athletics Championship in Calabar, averred that if emphasis is placed on sports the lost glory and respect which the country earned from other countries will be restoSportred.

The AFN boss prayed special that attention be paid to track and field events because that is an aspect where the country has made its mark in the past while referring to the just concluded championship as the best in the last ten years.

According to him, the days athletes spent in Calabar underscored the importance the state attached to the championship and that every athletes, whether winner or loser foreigner or local, looked forward to coming back to Calabar at the next edition.

AllAfrica – All the Time