Lagos – The Lagos State Government says it will rehabilitate its swimming pools to promote the sport from the grassroots in line with its tag as the state of “Aquatic Splendour’’.
The Chairman, Lagos State Sports Commission, Deji Tinubu, made the assertion on Monday while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on the commission’s sports programme.
He said that the government had mapped out strategies where the local governments developed the sports they had comparative advantage in for national development.
“Bearing in mind the state’s tag as the `state of aquatic splendour’, the government will not relent in its effort to promote swimming and other sports at the grassroots.
“For swimming, I will say that what we are doing is to rehabilitate all the swimming pools in the state and we are going to get more people to swim.
“We are going to have state competitions at the primary and secondary schools level and then, have open championships where everyone comes in.
“It is not going to be swimming alone; this year, what we are going to do is to take all sports to the grassroots.
“That way, we find the raw talents we want to develop in the years to come. Talking about volleyball and handball and as many sports as we can do.
“From the grassroots sports, we learn from the programmes we do for them and each sport will have a calendar for competitions,’’ he said.
Tinubu said that the government had scheduled programmes that would encapsulate all the local governments in the state with each
noted for a particular sport.[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”70560″]
“The programmed will enable the local governments to have a particular sport over a period of time and then go round, say in the first half of the year.
“By the time we get to September, those sports would have gone round about eight or nine local governments, and by that time, they will go back to compete in zonal championships.
“This means, for example, in October, a champion in handball would have emerged from Ikeja and from Ajegunle could be a champion in
volleyball.
“These zonal champions will now come to the centre; so at some point at the end of the year, we have a secondary school that is a state
champion,’’ he said.
Tinubu said that the same process would be adopted for athletes in track and field events in the state-owned schools to discover raw talents that could be processed to national champions.
“Individuals in track and field event will be discovered through this process too. We will have the fastest athletes for junior categories, especially from primary and secondary schools.
“What this does is that we would have been able to produce raw talents for the future. These are the ones we will start to train in
different programmes.
“As they are growing older, they are going into different age groups to represent the state and even outside the shores of the country.
“We are determined to create a new sport culture in Lagos State where we have children who are able to express themselves under a structured and supervised condition,’’ he said.
Tinubu noted that sports in the state schools would not interfere with the students’ studies, adding that the calendar had been fashioned to accommodate their academics.
“We are not putting sporting activities in the calendar of schools, but providing for the children to engage in sports.
“In this case, what happens is that a school may say they have a particular drive. We will go into a local government and look at the spaces and start from there.
“For example, volleyball has got a place in Ikorodu already, a Judo team from Badagry, we’ve got Netball too.
“The students will have somewhere to go to at weekends and be taught sports along with their school studies,’’ he said.
The sports commission chairman said the gifted sportsmen from the grassroots would be drafted into the state camp for effective monitoring and training. (NAN)
