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There is a
universal declaration that sports has a natural and universal power to
attract, to motivate, to inspire and engage people of all ages and the
love of sport is the love of life.

Sports is
everywhere and everywhere it is, sport demonstrates its capacity to
move people physically and emotionally, building respect, self-esteem,
team work and communication.

It breaks all
barriers, be it, religious, ethnic, political or creed and it is a
potent tool for social and economic development. The constitution of
the Federal Republic of Nigeria recognises this in S.15 (2) & (3).

The constitution
also makes provision for mass participation in sport, selective and
competitive, amateur and professional and for national integration. It
states further that the state shall provide adequate facilities for
sport, create framework and structures for sporting bodies at club,
town and state to international levels. Consequently, there should be a
long-term programme that would bear fruits even at the Olympic level by
2016 – eight years from now. Without this foundation, sports will at
best remain at abysmal levels of operation.

The major concern
should be a return of proper physical education and sports to the
schools so that a huge pool of sports talents can be produced from
which we can filter the cream of our sports people to become
professionals. There should be mass participation in sports at the base
(schools and youth levels) even if for these reasons: a healthier
populace and keeping the younger population busy.

Where some of these
people fail to become professional sports people, as will be the case,
they would have grown up imbibing the virtues of physical exercises,
which will be useful to them throughout life.

They would also have had education.

Mass participation for development

In its best form,
mass participation would be at the base with the numbers filtering to
the top where top class performers (professionals, if you wish) would
be nurtured.

In pursuing the
narrow agenda of victory in competitions, Nigeria has lost the
opportunities of using sports for youth development, poverty
alleviation, entertainment, economic development, tourism, physical and
health education. These are possible only where professionals (not just
people who parade academic qualifications in sports) manage sports.

Professional sports
is business. The best people to run professional sports are those who
understand the imperatives of investment in people, in facilities, in
training and how the mixture of these works out for the best.

Problems

There is a crisis
in our sports management system. It is not entirely new. This crisis is
borne out of a lack of style or method for sports development, a basic
ingredient without which we cannot talk of sports development. These
problems are multifarious and include: inadequate training, facilities
and equipment.

For some time, most
of the emphases have been on producing winning teams. There can be no
winning teams without a programme that trains and produces coaches,
physical education trainers, sports administrators, officials, referees
and other technical and support staff.

Our children are
growing up without sports being introduced to them early in life. When
they miss this early preparation, they have lost the opportunity
forever. Sports and physical education are alien to them. Most
pre-primary school institutions do not have facilities for sports and
this paucity of facilities goes all the way through primary, secondary
schools to the higher institutions. While in most countries their
higher institutions have standard facilities for international
competitions, not one of our higher institutions has standard sports
facilities. So where would the professional sports people come from?

Sports equipment
has high duties placed on them as they are majorly imported. At every
level of sports development, equipment is important.

There is a limit to
improvisation as equipment, these days, have become standardised. Where
our children grow up without exposure to the right equipment, they
would be starting all over in their “old age”. Today’s sports people
make their decision early in life. In tennis and swimming, they start
as early as four.

School system has to be re-engineered

Poor conditions of
service in the schools have scared young people away from teaching. In
the next few years, when the “old teachers” are gone, the schools would
be in bigger trouble and so will our sports. Today’s problem is that
the teachers are not physically fit enough to encourage physical
activity among the students. Many people who trained as physical
educationists, the “professionals” are abandoning their profession.

Abolition of the
boarding school system in many states has bred young people who get
into sports without the discipline that the boarding houses ensured.
Sports people require a lot of discipline and constant monitoring of
their progress, in addition to provision of trainers and equipment. The
boarding schools provided the perfect environment. The students were
always “in camp”, except during the holidays, and appreciable levels of
nutrition were taken for granted and the increase in poverty levels
means that many children are growing up mal-nourished and cannot
develop properly (physically and mentally) to participate in sports.

There lies the problems with sports and unfortunately, the political
leadership, at all levels, does not see the worth of sports. The best
they do is pay lip service to sports.