The Executive Chairman of the Lagos State Sports Commission, Dr. Kweku Tandoh has revealed that the state will use the forthcoming National Sports Festival holding in Abuja from December 6 to 16 to give exposure to the state’s athletes.
NationSport reports 442 athletes will be competing in 31 sports for Lagos at the 19th edition of the event.
In a chat with NationSport during the inauguration of Boards of 40 Sports Associations in Lagos State held at the Molade Okoya-Thomas Indoor Sports Hall, Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere on Monday, Tandoh said he turned down calls from professionals and foreign based athletes who wanted to represent the state at the festival in order to allow home grown athletes to exhibit their talents.
“We have a very high expectations going to the sports festival. We have a team that will definitely do very well because they’ve been nurtured not just because of the festival, but overtime. So we will go there with the athletes.
“I had a lot of calls from professional athletes especially international professionals to come and represent Lagos State and I said no we are not interested. This is because it will add no developmental value to Nigeria as a whole if for example they come and win a gold medal. It is of no benefit to the country. But if a new person comes up and wins a medal, that is an additional talent and that is the message we are trying to pass across in Lagos State. Every state should focus on developing its athletes from grassroot rather than waiting for festivals and going to buy athletes from here and there. At the end of the day Nigeria will be the loser and that is not what we want.
“Our focus is to expose our athletes to the next level. They’ve performed at state level, they’ve performed at zonal level and now they are going to national level to see how far they are doing, to see areas that we also need to improve. So we are more interested in developmental and that starts from our policy right from grassroot sports,” Tandoh told NationSport.
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