The 2022 Asaba Sports Festival will come with many benefits – Minister of Sports

• Says the Adopt an Athlete initiative was profitable for the Nigerian team
Sports Minister Chief Sunday Dare has said that hosting the National Sports Festival has many benefits.

“The whole idea of ​​the Sports Festival goes beyond creating the bond of unity between young Nigerians from different states,” Dare told Newslodge at the presidential hostel, Asaba, shortly after presenting the Main Organizing Committee (MOC) of the Asaba 2022 National Sports Festival during the week.

“The Sports Festival is also intended to be a field industry to harvest young talent and also to bring in grassroots sports talent for the national teams.

“But also, the Sports Festival is intended to help states develop sports infrastructure and build a sports culture because when a state decides to host the Sports Festival, it goes beyond the athletes entering that state. It has to do with the injection of funds into the state’s economy. It increases the investments made by the state government in sports infrastructure because there are certain sports infrastructures that must be enabled to house 14,000 athletes. The state must have shelters and it must have a stadium with tracks. So the idea is that any state that hosts Sports Festivals has developed this sports infrastructure.

Look at how the face of the state of Edo completely changed after hosting the last National Sports Festival. When you have 14,000 athletes for three weeks. It helps the local economy, hotels, markets, infrastructure and it also helps athletes, ”Dare said.

The Sports Minister also spoke about the success of the Adopt-An-Athlete initiative, a program he presented in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics.

“The Adopt-An-Athlete initiative paid off for the Nigerian team at the Tokyo Olympics,” he said. “It was for soul purpose to support our athletes at the Tokyo Olympics. That was the main goal, but it was also meant to test the ground to see how we can get individuals and corporate organizations and government at levels beyond the Federal Government to embrace the idea. We had expectations and we are pleased that, to a large extent, those expectations have been met. That is why I mentioned that for the Governor of the State of Delta to adopt almost 12 athletes, paying them directly in the region of N8 million, some of them $ 10,000, and about $ 20,000. These are money that went directly to the athletes. They had never experienced it before the Adopt-An-Athlete initiative.

“Outside of Governor Okowa, we had several others. Edo State Governor was adopted, Edo State Deputy Governor was adopted, Lagos State Governor was adopted, Ogun State Governor was adopted, Halogen was adopted, and many other private organizations were also adopted. So in the end, we had almost 21 or 22 adopted athletes. For us, our expectations were met.

We thought the 42 athletes we wanted to feature would benefit, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hit and people lost their fitness and income. We are rethinking that instead of just doing it for the Olympics, perhaps we should keep it as a model for three of our major international sporting events (Olympics, Commonwealth Games and African Games). I think that is what we are going to do because we have seen how the performance of our athletes has improved.

“What is this money for? Help athletes pay their coaches, medical expenses and attend competitions. We have seen the impacts. If it is a policy that is helping athletes, now we will try to use it and extend it to the Commonwealth Games and the African Games, “he said.