After Nigeria’s abysmal performance at the 2012 London Olympics in which the country failed to win a single medal, stakeholders have been calling for an aggressive grassroots sports talent hunt.
They say that the talent hunt will enable the country to discover potential athletes and nurture them.
It is, perhaps, clear to sports administrators that Nigeria’s failure to win any medal at the London Olympics signifies some deficiencies in the sports sector.
As part of efforts to redress the trend, the U-17 National Youth Games (NYG) was introduced, in line with the recommendations of National Sports Summit which was convened by President Goodluck Jonathan after the dismal Olympics outing.
The maiden edition of the games was held in Abuja between Dec. 6 and Dec. 15, 2013.
Malam Bolaji Abdullahi, Minister of Sports, who warned states against fielding over-aged athletes, noted that unlike the National Sports Festival (NSF), the NYG was not for established athletes.
In all, 2,917 athletes from 31 states and the FCT participated in the 11-day tournament which featured 14 sports.
The sports are football, badminton, basketball, boxing, handball, power-lifting, squash, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, track and field, volleyball, weightlifting and wrestling.
According to Malam Al-hassan Yakmut, the Chairman of the Local Organising Committee (LOC), the 14 sports are where Nigeria has comparative advantage.
However, Edo, Ekiti, Jigawa, Lagos and Zamfara states did not participate in the sports tournament.
Yakmut described the non-participation of the five states as a huge setback to sports development efforts in those states.
He said that the five state governments owed their youths an apology for denying them the opportunity to showcase their talents.
At the end of the competition, 370 talents were discovered for grooming at the High Performance Centre of the National Sports Commission (NSC) in Abuja
One of the major upsets at the games was the defeat of Nigeria’s Under-18 Lawn Tennis champion, Sarah Adegoke, who is from Oyo State.
Adegoke was defeated in two straight sets of 6-2, 7-5 by Lizzy Pam, an England-based secondary school student, who represented Plateau in the female singles tennis event.
Pam, 15, a student of Culford Secondary School, Bury Saint Edmund, England, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that she was inspired to win the final match by the American tennis sisters, Venus and Serena Williams.
She said that her target was to become a professional tennis player like Serena Williams or Victoria Azarenka of Belarus.
To the organisers of the games, Pam’s discovery was one of the biggest things that happened in the sports tournament, as it was a good development in efforts to discover quality tennis players for the country.
A 13-year-old girl, Nkiruka Iroha, was also discovered in the girls’ 800 metres final.
However, Iroha, who represented Cross River, did not win the event but it was remarkable that she placed second.
She was able to achieve the feat after she broke her personal best record by six seconds.
Dr Bruce Ijirgho, a sports consultant to the Cross River Government, said that he discovered Iroha at the age of nine.
He said that with little effort, Iroha could surpass the achievements of former Nigerian athletes like Mary Onyali-Omagbemi and current Africa sprint queen, Blessing Okagbare.
The sports minister, who spoke during the closing ceremony, stressed that states had crucial roles to play in the early discovery of talents.
Abdullahi noted that early discovery of talents was one of the idiosyncratic features of sports administration in advanced countries, adding that if not for the local sports talent hunt, the likes of Nkiruka Iroha would not have been discovered.
He urged the states to take due advantage of the games, saying that it was part of President Jonathan’s Transformation Agenda for the sports sector.
Besides, Abdullahi said that the employment of two Performance Directors from the U.S. would strengthen efforts to provide the missing links in Nigeria’s sports administration.
Ahead of the 2014 edition of the NYG, Ekiti State, which did not participate in the maiden edition, has given an assurance that it would take part in the second edition.
Mr Kayode Olaosebikan, the state Commissioner for Youth and Sports, told NAN in Ado-Ekiti that paucity of funds prevented the state from participating in the first edition of the games.
Olaosebikan pledged that in 2014, the state government would sponsor the participation of athletes in local and international sports competitions.
He also underscored the determination of the state government to take sports to the next level this year.
Observers note that the successes of the maiden edition of the NYG may have prompted Ekiti to express its readiness to participate in the 2014 edition of the games.
They, nonetheless, urge the National Sports Commission to ensure the sustenance of the tournament, while making participation in the games compulsory for all the states.
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