Date: 2014-01-01

As speculation is rife over President Goodluck Jonathan planned cabinet reshuffle, stakeholders in sports have called for continuity in the sector.
President of Nigeria School Sports Federation (NSSF), Ibrahim Muhammad, said yesterday that under the present leadership of the National Sports Commission (NSC), sport has witnessed a resurgence especially with regards to grassroots development. He cited the special attention given to school sports, which came to fore at the last National School Sports Festival held in Ilorin, Kwara State recently.

Muhammad believes the Minister of Sports/ Chairman of the NSC, Bolaji Abdullahi has shown that he is passionate about grassroots sports with the setting up of a new board for the National Academicals Sports Committee (NASCOM) chaired by Yemi Idowu.

  “I want to say that any alteration in the leadership of NSC will surely take us back to where we were before the current lift. Since assumption of office, the minister has displayed some seriousness in reviving the fortune of sports, and this became obvious when he attended the last National School Sports Festival. Never in the history of the games that a serving minister will attend the championship and this alone has given us hope that in few years, we will get back to our glorious days in sports,” the NSSF boss said.

He continued: “changing the leadership at this point in time will not help sports generally and it will be counter-productive. So I want to appeal to the Presidency to allow this present minister to carry on with what he has started so that in few years, Nigeria can return to her rightful place in the world.”

Muhammad insisted that the National School Sports Festival had a private sector support for the first time and this he believes was made possible by NASCOM, a body reconstituted by the minister.

“For us at school sports, we will forever be grateful to the minister because in the history of our games, we have never had it so good like what we had in Ilorin. Sterling Bank single-handedly sponsored the games while Nestle also supported us. So for us, NASCOM has been a blessing because it has shown that it is really a partner in progress. I must commend the leadership of NASCOM led by Mr Idowu, who has shown that they is ready to complement the efforts of NSC in its programmes for development at the grassroots,” he added.

NASCOM boss, Idowu, agrees with the NSSF boss, stressing that there is no point changing a winning team as the minister and director general of the NSC have worked together to lift sports.

He listed some of the achievement of the present leadership of NSC, as winning the AFCON 2013 and FIFA U-17 World Cup while Nigeria also returned to the global stage in athletics.