Rivers United assistant Badminton Rivers Coach, Mimi Siri Onengiye has highlighted the irregularities in the age screening process at the 7th National Youth Games which has allowed room for cheating and over-age participation.
Mimi advocated that there should be a reconsideration of the reward system as the urge to win more silverware by competing states has allowed for cheating and maneuvering of results in their favor.
Assessing the events from her standpoint in her exclusive interview with Sports247.ng she said – “It hasn’t been very palatable seeing some malpractices around, it’s not encouraging but what can we do about it, all the same, we give God the glory”.
“This event is called Youth Games U-15 yet we are seeing athletes above 15 participating in this game and they are not stopped, it’s really appalling to us”, she lamented.
“So far, our outings have been fine even though we could have done better but we can’t change that”.
“This is Nigeria and there are lots of malpractices, there are ways Nigerians find themselves maneuvering so many protocols, the system isn’t fine because imagine using a thumbprint and you still have two results for a particular person”.
“There’s nothing straightforward because the NIN process isn’t working so maybe they should use other means of identification instead of this NIN”, Mimi advised.
Advising on what should be considered in a bid to curb the situation by the ministry, she pointed out “Everybody wants to win the medal because they know what’s at stake, in my opinion, if they remove this gold, silver, bronze reward, it should be better because then they can say scholarships because they will bring them from the school to know their real age”.
“The silverware enables this menace, there are better reward systems different from this medal presentation because that’s the main problem, this time around, they are no longer looking at development it’s win at all cost”, she concluded.
