The minister for youth and sports development, Sunday Dare has revealed his excitement over the emergence of talented young athletes across the country during his visit to the ongoing national sports festival centers.
Dare heaved a sigh of relief admitting that these set of growing talents in various categories have all it takes to represent Nigeria at the Olympics and make the country proud, sports247 gathered.
“I think that we have seen a lot of display of talents and skills in the last ten to eleven days. I’m watching wrestling, you know wrestling is one of our great hopes when it comes to the Olympics for both the male and female category. I see a lot of young people who have a future in wrestling so far so good, am excited about the excitement that I have seen across all the centers have been to since I arrived.”
“My message to the athletes is that they need to remain disciplined and focused, and also show the spirit of sportsmanship. I’ve seen those that have won, seen those who have lost and have seen that spirit of courage. I think the future is great for most of these young athletes.”
The minister explained that both the ministry and Edo State government are in partnership to make the festival a success, “We are partners and this wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the ministry of youths and sports and the Edo State government. If not for the COVID-19 pandemic, we were just five days off to start and everything was set, so we all had to recover. The partnership continues for the sake of the youths and athletes we have in the country as well as sports development.”
“Of course, you can see that we settled for eleven different sports, and even from here, we can see track and field, records are been broken, we see new people who have qualified. This is what we expected from this sports festival and that’s why we called it the “Nigerian Olympics”.”
“Am very hopeful that if we get all of these athletes into camp, we get them in shape, and get them focused, we support them, these group of sportsmen and women will do Nigeria great at the Olympics, our chances are great,” he admitted.
On if he’s monitoring and concerned about the progress of his state Oyo, the minister had this to say, “I have already programmed myself, I’m here as the sports minister for the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Oyo State is as important as Kano, Benue, and Edo because my terrain is the entire country, I just want to see the best person win and that’s what have seen so far. The referring is excellent and we see that all of the athletes are exhibiting their best skills here, that’s the most important.”
