Oladunjoye Advocates New Policy For Hosting Of National Sports Festival

The recently held 19th National Sports Festival in Abuja was staged six years after the 18th edition of the competition, tagged Eko 2012, which supposed to be biennial, was organised in Lagos State. The state, which was given the hosting right, Cross River, failed to meet up due to paucity of funds and organisational problems. A lacuna was created until the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports came to the rescue.

“We have to commend the Ministry of Sports and more importantly all the states that came for the sports festival in Abuja. The 19th edition was coming after a long and endless waiting on the Cross River State Government to host the event. This is not the best and we should try not to let this situation occur again.

“This brought the question of how do we fund the sports festival?  There is no doubt that no state is buoyant enough to shoulder the responsibility of hosting the festival alone considering the economic situation of the country and other commitments which the state governments must attend to. This is the reason I believe the Federal Government through the Ministry of Sports should come in and assist any state hosting this festival in the future. The assistance and support must go beyond what we are seeing now.

“Since the Ministry of Sport as it is currently called has no athletes or players of its own and will all the time depend on the national Federations/Unions to produce athletes for international engagements, the National Sports Festival should be the primary responsibility of the Federal Government to be sponsored in galvanizing efforts for talents to compete and sort out new discoveries for further training and coaching.

“In this arrangement states across the nation should therefore be encouraged to bid and host for desired infrastructure development across the country. Any state hosting should be supported with solid assurance when showing visibly 60 to 70 percent readiness for the festival. The Federal Government’s support should come in form of Equity Grant on development for proper completion of facilities.

“Every state participating depending on numbers of participants to the Games are to be supported with grants for preparations, camping (open/closed) of at least four to six weeks prior to the take off of the festival for desired quality participation, kitting and nutrition of all their athletes to look good and perform very well and they must be guided too for optimum performance during and after the Games.

“Reasonable awards should be given to deserving states particularly those states showing improved participation from the rear in the last four to six National Sports Festivals held and those which were consistently leading from the Top 4 states too.

“I believe that these are robust actions that would change the narratives concerning these Games. More importantly, the National Sports Festival, whether Open or Closed, should be held every two years in unbroken going forward,” he said.

Oladunjoye, the Tournament Director of the Lagos Open Tennis Championship, formerly Governor’s Cup Lagos Tennis, an International Tennis Federation (ITF) approved competition in Lagos, decried the attitude of poaching and luring of athletes with money by some states for them to feature for those states in the sports festival, saying that “this is very bad and not too good for the future of our sports.

“I think it is high time government comes up with a policy that will be enforced that no athlete should be allowed to feature for a state in the sports festival without proof of being in the state for at least four years prior to the sports festival. It is not developmental to see athletes that have trained in a state featuring for another state just because that state wants to win the competition. This is not helpful to the states and not helpful to the country as a whole,” he said.

Speaking on various sports federations which are not properly funded by the government at the federal level, Oladunjoye, who was the Chairman of Bid Committee of the Eko 2012 National Sports Festival, posited that the government should not give attention to one sport to the detriment of others, adding “the intervention from the government should cut across sports. The federations should have their activities for a year submitted to the government and government should in turn give specific figure of funds to each federation to prosecute its activities. These funds must be given timely ahead so that there will be room for preparation and organisation. The federations on their own should also source for sponsorships to compliment the intervention funding from the government.”

On sports facilities development, the former Senior Special Assistant on Grassroots Sports Development to erstwhile Governor of Lagos State, Mr Babatunde Raji Fashola has these advice for the authorities. “The Federal Government must make urgent intervention of capital provision of minimal functional sporting facilities in each Local Government either at the old 774 or the new almost 1300 LGs/LCDAs if not more nationwide as her equity contributory support.

“These local councils should be equipped with Year 2020 compliant equipment and materials replaceable every five to six years resting wholly on wear and tear to ensure our youth and adults have functional  recreational and competitive sporting locations to keep fit, exercise, train in redirecting their energies to more purposeful pursuits for them to become wholesome personalities and heavy numbers of sports ambassadors for this great Nation.”