Olalekan Okusan
Former national table tennis coach, Babatunde Obisanya , believes the return of school sports remains the only way out of the dwindling fortune of sports across the country.
The former national school champion in the 1960s is pained that successive governments in the country has continued to pay lip service to school sports, adding that until conscious efforts are made by those in charge, Nigeria would continue to day-dream of becoming the giant of Africa in sports.
“Being a former school champion myself and rising to become national champion in the 1960s, anything short of school sports would amount to nothing because during the regional government era, sports was a culture in schools,” Obisanya noted in an interactive session on FUBS, a popular whatsapp platform.
“ Each school then has a physical education instructor who exposed students to different sporting activities and later identified and monitor students to various competitions at the regional level. In short taking sports to the schools is very key in this development.”
On why table tennis players hardly go to school, he said: “When I was the National Coach, I took a cue from my former President of Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF), Dr. Efunkoya who ensured and also insisted that table tennis players must have cognitive development to have a good skill development to be able to have a better understanding of the game you are involved in.
“ He even went to the extent of sending some of our young players then to his wife’s schools at New Era in Surulere and Aunty Ayo in Ikoyi as well as provided free accommodation for some of them. In recent past, things continue to go bad as carpenters are called upon to do Bricklayer’s job in sports generally.”
He lamented that the inability of the athletes to embrace the sports prompted age-falsification.
He explained: “It is unfortunate that most of our athletes don’t start early and it’s a big issue and this is one of the reasons we falsify our ages across board.
“ I became the senior national champion in 1971 having won the then All Nigeria Coca Cola Championship (which ran for about 32 years) and most importantly I was the youngest in the national team with the likes of Solomon Bamgbade, Lassey Wilson, Phillip Santos and Waidi Dawodu that represented Nigeria at the Commonwealth and World Championships in Singapore and Nagoya, Japan respectively,” he added but regretted the quality of coaching in the country: “A number of the sports federations are not having qualified coaches who are passionate and committed to the job. Most times they are imposed by the powers that be.”
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