The Chairman of the National Sports Commission, Shehu Dikko, on Thursday reiterated his plans for the nation’s sports, revealing how he intends to tackle the challenge of funding.
Speaking as a guest on Channels Television’s Sports Tonight, Dikko said with the creation of the National Sports Development Fund, the problem of inadequate funding would be solved.
“The main issue of sports is about funding. The moment you can resolve the funding issue and get the sustainable flow of funding into sports, about 80 per cent of the problem is resolved,” he said.
“Part of what we are working on is to see how we can resolve the funding issue by creating the National Sports Development Fund. Through that fund, we can create a lot of process to generate funding.”
The NSC boss explained that with proper funding, the commission can channel money into infrastructural projects, hiring personnel and technical people as well as paying the athletes.
During the show, he assured Nigerians that no sports will be promoted at the expense of others.
He promised not to give undue advantage to one sport, stressing that it is imperative that more popular sports are used to promote the unpopular ones.
According to him, all sports with be given equal opportunity to develop.
“People should not have this fear about football, they say football is king of sports or whatever it is, but we should use football to be able to drive other sports and we should be able to give equal opportunities to other sports,” Dikko said.
“There is no need to isolate one sport and say we are putting all attention to that sport, but at the end of the day, we have to also work on our comparative advantage. Which are the sports that give us comparative advantage, either to get medals or to develop our sports economy we want to do?
“If you look at it, football in Nigeria for example that is a report that says 83% of Nigerians are interested in football, about 65% of Nigerians are participating in football.
“So, we should use the popularity and the appeal of football to drag other sports to come along with us so they can all develop within their comparative advantage and within their own capabilities,” he said.
