The Minister of Sports and Chairman of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, has reiterated reasons why his management is forging ahead with reforms in the sports sector.

Delivering his address at the 19th Council of Sports Meeting which ended in Ilorin, Kwara State, yesterday, the minister said the desire to achieve a different set of results and take sports development to great height have been the driving force behind ongoing transformation at the NSC, adding that there is no better time than now to reposition sports administration in Nigeria.

He also identified the need to transform the National Sports Festival (NSF), which is Nigeria’s equivalent of the Olympics and make it more competitive and attractive to sponsors and athletes.

“Sports is a sector that generates so much attention and passion; it is also a sector in which almost everyone claims to be an expert, but it is our duty as the top sports administrators in the country to decide on policies and programmes which would result in greater speed towards achieving sports development,” Abdullahi said.

He charged participants at the meeting which included commissioners of sports, permanent secretaries of sports ministries, directors of sports, presidents of sports federations and other stakeholders to formulate policies and programmes that would achieve optimum results.

The minister said that reconstitution of the National Academicals Sports Committee (NASCOM) is geared towards creating a junior competition for teenagers in school, maintaining that an open NSF will be counter-productive without a junior competition to discover fresh talent.

He used the occasion to call on club managers to sheath their swords and support the transformation efforts going at the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL).