2013 Budget: Don decries allocation to sports

October 18, 2012 17:58

Audio attached

2013 Budget: Don decries allocation to sports

NAN-S-8

Onifade

Lagos, Oct. 18, 2012 (NAN) Prof Ademola Onifade, Chairman, Sports Council for Lagos State University (LASU), on Thursday, criticised the N9 billion allocation to sports in the 2013 Budget, saying it was inadequate.

 

Onifade told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that judging by the country’s recent failures at the London 2012 Olympic Games he was expecting that better attention ought to have been paid to sports.

 

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``The budget for sports, I don’t know what they based it on, but from my knowledge of sports administration and funding of sports, the allocation was not enough.

 

``If that budget is meant to prepare in addition to other expenses in sports for next Olympic Games, it’s not enough because we need an average of three to four years to prepare one Olympic gold medalist or any medalist at all in the Olympic Games.

 

``Three to four years of real preparation, full preparation, intense preparation, scientific preparation.

 

``In other words, we would be giving the athletes the medal hopes or hopefuls opportunities to participate in international competitions.

 

``That is preparing themselves, getting involved in so many competitions just to prepare them. Those that are student athletes, we need to give them scholarships so that they can combine both school and training.

 

``And those that are working, you need to give them opportunities to compete in international competitions to season, to get prepared; so it takes a lot of money.

 

``Then not to talk of the logistics internally, that is within Nigeria, with respect to sports; so that money is not enough.”

 

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President Goodluck Jonathan had announced an allocation of N9, 234,984,928 billion to sports out of a total of N4.9 trillion for the 2013 fiscal year.

 

Onifade stressed that it was important for government to place more emphasis on sports in order to prevent further collapse of the sector.

From the allocation, the National Sports Commission (NSC) had highest of N6, 768,742,453 billion while the Nigeria Football Federation has N1, 580,233.771 billion.

 

The National Institute for Sports has the lowest allocation of N562, 632, 075 million. (NAN)

HAY/TON/MSAD

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