Sports experts have emphasised the need for a high performance center in Nigeria if the country must develop sports at the grassroots.
The experts,who were reviewing Team Nigeria’s performance at the 2014 Commonwealth Games on Channels Television’s Sunrise on Saturday, suggested that the centre should be a standard one with medical facilities for out of competition checks.
“The high performance centre is not a track but a laboratory where athletes can check their ability, standard with records taken and then a traing programme can be mapped out based on the athlete situation,” they said.
On Team Nigeria’s excellent run at the Commonwealth games in Glasgow Scotland, George Ashiru, who is the President of the Nigeria Taekwando Federation, revealed that there was a meeting of the high performance task team in Abuja before the games, where a target of the number of gold medals to be won was set.
”What we said was that we cannot get less than the best in the past. This means that if we had ten gold medals in the past, we can’t get less than that in the games, as that would be failure.”
He praised the resilience and determination of the athletes for doing their country proud despite the shambolic preparation towards the games.
Mr Ashiru said the athletes didn’t had no training tour and only camped four weeks in Abuja, as the right kind of funding with preparation wasn’t there.
”In consideration that we didn’t have the best preparation and the necessary funding, we did well,” he said.
He blamed the lack of adequate preparation for the games to the distractions in the country, stressing that the Team Nigeria would have done better than what they did in Glasgow if there was adequate preparations.
Mr Ashiru said there was a large pool of unemployed young people below 30 years in Nigeria who are potential gold medalists, but had not considered Sports and entertainment which are the biggest opportunity for people in that age group.
A former commissioner for sports in Ogun State, Dr.Bukola Olopade, was of the view that the athletes at the grassroots can only be nurtured by the governments at the state level, as the Federal Government could only fund and not nurture athletes.
Giving example of what the Delta State government is doing as regards sport development, Dr. Olopade advised that sports should be institutionalised with the best of all structure.
”Sports should be institutionalised in such a way that talents are discovered, nurtured and funded at the state level.”
He however stated that states are not doing enough in sport development at the grassroots, as they tend to discontinue with laid down structure on ground.
Dr. Olopade urged the governments at all levels to work seriously together in discovering talents in the grassroots.
A sport medical doctor, Dr. Bukola Bojuwoye, said sport doctors in Nigeria are not enough and more people are needed to major in sports medicine.
He emphasised the need to consider sports science in sports development in Nigeria and regret that a lot of states in Nigeria do not have a concrete sport medicine centre.
Dr. Bojuwoye said that doping amongst athletes in Nigeria was as a result of in-activeness of the athletes who have not been training due to lack of competition.
He said the athletes were liable anytime the test positive to banned substances. “They are responsible for what they take as food or medicine.
“The situation wherein Chika Amahala tested positive for banned substance after winning gold in the commonwealth games could be blamed on weightlifting federation and the lack of properly trained medical personnel attached to the federation,” he said.
The experts advised the governments at all levels to build sport facilities for children to make use of.
They said that if this could be done, the country would be better for it.
