Director of sport for FCT ,Chief(Dr) Dilichukwu Onyedima has declared that the forthcoming national sports festival will one of the toughest in the history of the competition.
Dilichukwu while speaking in her office in Abuja said the National Youth Games has raised the bar in terms of preparation ,readiness of states to give perennial teams a run for their money while giants like Lagos,Edo are beginning to wake up.
The national youth games has opened the eyes of many administrators to the importance of early preparation and having a proper structure in place that will keep producing talents.
She went further the dominance of Delta state in all facets of sports has made other states to start preparing ahead of the National Sports Festival
At the national youth games we saw many states looking for young talents that they can poach ahead of the National Sports Festival which makes it more difficult for states like Delta and Rivers who have been more dominant in poaching athletes from other states
According to her’the national sports festival is not going to be a tea party because FCT hopes to compete against the big four ,Edo,Delta, Rivers and Lagos state.
We have started working out a program that will help us to retain our best crop of athletes while welcoming back some of our athletes who have gone to represent other states.’Our target is to perform better that our last position at the last national sports festival held in Abuja’ she said.
To forestall a recurrence of what happened in the past,the sports department has gone ahead to submit the budget for the games to the FCT minister who they hope will sign and release money on time for the games so that the athletes can be called to camp early.
In the last five years ,FCT sports have suffers series of neglect from the administrators who are suppose to protect the sports but we hope things will be different this time after the embarrassment suffered at the national youth games where the athletes could hardly buy water to drink during games.
