Minna is 80% ready for 2014 NICEGA – Provost

Facilities for the 2014 Nigerian Colleges of Education Games to be hosted by the Niger State College of Education, Minna has reached 80 per cent completion while work on the pavilion and tracks are near completion.
But the Provost of the Niger State College of Education, Prof. Faruq Rashid Haruna, has decried what he described as “donor apathy” to issues of sports, insisting that people should see sponsoring sports as another way of job creation and not just for the fun of playing games.
Speaking to The Eagle Online on the preparedness of the school for the NICEGA, which the institution is hosting for the first time since inception, Haruna challenged well to do Nigerians on the need to invest in sports sponsorship to eradicate joblessness among Nigerian youths.
He said: “It is unfortunate that most well to do Nigerians show some sort of apathy to sponsorship of sports because they feel it is a waste but it is not.
“Rather it serves as alternative platform for job creation because many young Nigerians survive today playing football.”
The provost, who told our correspondent that participants in some of the sporting events will also go through zonal elimination, gave the names of sporting events to feature at the event to include basketBall, badminton, volleyball and table tennis.
Other sporting events to feature during the fiesta, according to Prof. Haruna, include hockey, football, lawn tennis, handball, athletics as well as local wrestling, called langa.
Haruna said funding has been the major challenge facing the organisers of the championship expected to take place in March.
The provost, who expressed optimism that the fiesta, tagged Talba 2013, will be a huge success, said: “Funding has been our major challenge.
“Up till this moment, we have not received a kobo from anybody.
“The beauty of the whole thing is that we have been doing all that we have achieved as far as the NICEGA is concerned utilising funds we generated through Internally Generated Revenue.
“We are making slow but steady move towards the successful hosting of the games.”