Minister of Sports and Youth Development Solomon Dalung has assured Nigerians that post-May 29 political transition would not hinder the release of funds for Nigeria’s participation in upcoming sports tournaments.
Dalung gave the assurance to Nigerians in a keynote address he delivered at a two-day workshop and strategy meeting, organised for sports federations’ presidents, secretaries-general and technical directors in Abuja on Friday.
He said: “I had the opportunity to interact with President Muhammadu Buhari during one of our briefing sessions and told him that funds needed to be released for upcoming competitions before the cabinet was dissolved.
“Mr President has assured me that funds will be made available ahead of the competitions and that there won’t be any reason for preparations to suffer.”
The workshop brought together presidents and secretaries of federations, as well as technical directors on anti-doping sensitisation and strategising ahead of Nigeria’s participation in major tournaments.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Nigeria is set to participate in major international competitions between June and August, including the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations to be hosted by Egypt from June 21 to July 19, 2019.
The female national football team, the Super Falcons, will also participate in the 8th FIFA Women’s World Cup taking place in France between June 7 and July 7, 2019.
The 12th Africa Games (formally All African Games) billed to take place from August 19 t0 August 31, 2019 in Rabat, Morocco, is also on the list of scheduled tournaments.
Dalung told the gathering that the democratisation process put in place to sanitise sports federations had started paying off and urged federations to sustain the gains.
He said one of the objectives of the workshop was to determine to what extent federations have reached substantial levels of democratisation.
Dalung warned that any federation’s board, which failed to comply with the basic provision of having a ratified constitution in place, was doing a disservice to such federation.
He said: “This meeting is important because as we wind down this dispensation, we want to ensure that the democratisation of federations is complied with.
“Any federation which fails to comply has automatically applied to be dissolved.”
NAN also reports that a roll call of all federations under the sports ministry was taken and their levels of compliance verified at the event.
Earlier in his opening remarks, Olusade Adesola, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, said a lot of plans went into bringing the federations’ administrators together to discuss sports governance and preparations for major tournaments.
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