Patrick Omorodion
8 November 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
It is also pertinent that all sports loving Nigerians should ask both the Senate Committee on Sports and the staffers of the NSC where the programme for school sports can be found and what is the budget for it - after all we are talking Under-17 World Cup which is for school children and committing billions of tax payers money to it without any commensurate programme for our children in schools and the school system.
On another note, one can safely proffer advice - one billion Naira committed to each of the six geopolitical zones in the country and placed in a bank at a modest interest can form the basis of national school sports in perpetuity for our teeming young people so that we can re-focus their energies away from negative pursuits like cultism, militancy, excessive computer games and other vices.
Discussing only the conflicting and confusing billions of tax payers money in the media that will be wasted in the next few months by a few Nigerians in the LOC and their collaborators is simply nauseating and a flight to fancy while the fundamentals and basic structures of our school sports/youth sports programmes is practically non existent.
We should stop making mockery of ourselves and our country the subject of caricature in the eyes of the sporting world. All people of good conscience should remind the Senate Committee on Sports and the LOC and staffers of the NSC that this is an internet and electronic world and we are now a global village where information is available and research and comparisons are now quite an easy process.
Finally, there are many arguments for and against the hosting of the Under-17 Cup which has been surreptitiously thrust upon Nigeria without any bidding process and/or openness by a few people whose motives can not easily be ascertained.
However, once our President has made a pronouncement on the matter; we would all fall behind him and do the best we can as a people and as a nation to host the world - the least people that should be clamouring for increase of the N9 billion budget without any commensurate explanation and/or justification should not be those who we pay for their salaries/upkeep. Enough should be enough!
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