Nigeria’s Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Solomon Dalung has declared a state of emergency in sports following the lack of performance in the sector.
Clearly, Team Nigeria had a poor outing at the just concluded Rio Olympics which was traced to lack of funds and inadequate preparations. The sports minister said the federal government is the process of reforming the sector in a bid to avoid such bad performance in future.
While receiving the reports of the sports reform committee, Dalung declared: “We are indeed in a state of emergency because of lack of performance in the sports sector. We will therefore take far reaching measures to restructure the sector. Our dismal outing at the just concluded Rio Olympics is another factor why we must reform our sports.
“Although it is not what we hoped for, yet it offered a glimmer of hope that if we put our acts together, we will achieve greater results in future Olympics. This is part of what this report is about. Having received this report from the Sports Reform Committee, we will begin the implementation by declaring a state of emergency in Nigerian sports”.
Prior to this, the sports minister had revealed he was not informed of the Nigeria Football Federation’s plans to hire a new coach for the National side, Super Eagles.