Sports festival, a tool for national unity -Dare

The National Sports festival Edo 2020 has  lived up to expectation in forging National unity  and the discovery  of talents, says Sports Minister Chief Sunday Dare.

While giving an overview  of the biennial  games, the Honourable Minister  stated “By and large, our expectations have been met as a Ministry. The  National Sports festival  remains a strong  tool for national unity which  brings together young talents from across the  length and breadth of the country. Apart from the spirit  of sportsmanship,   we have seen  great display of talents and skills, and  cutting edge competition amongst our young athletes. Also,  we’ve seen  records  broken and  excitement from the participants who had waited and trained for years to do this.”

The Minister who went  round over 12  venues at  festival revealed that  swimming is one of the  sports where the country can win more than one medal at the Olympics. “This country should be one of the top swimming countries in the world, that is also one of the sports  where you can easily   win  the highest number of medals. The most important lesson is how we can develop  swimming. When you look at the South South and  the Far North for  example the  Argungun Festival where  people swim,  it has always had potential. So we need to focus on  swimming because we can get more than 10 medals  from the Olympics.”

The  Minister expressed   delight on  the athletes impressive performances, insisting  that the Adopt an Athlete Initiative where some athletes were funded to train, get coaches as well equipments under private partnerships was paying off.

While  commending  the President of The Handball Federation of Nigerian, the Minister  said  “I have seen a  high display of  skills from our young boys and girls in  handball, this country will start an handball  program which could   eventually result to  Nigeria  becoming  world beaters. The Handball  president is very innovative as he has  been able to leverage on private sponsorship which is critical for every single federation. This has made the Handball Federation one of  the most successful Federations  in the country”