By Olanrewaju Akojede
The Secretary General of Nigeria Boxing Federation (NBF), Dapo Akinyele, on Friday commended President Bola Tinubu for splitting the ministry of Youths and Sports Development.
Akinyele, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), said this would enable John Enoh, newly appointed sports minister, focus on the growth of sports in the country.
“First, we thank the president for appointing a separate minister for Sports, this is a cheering news because it will allow for development we all crave for in sports.
“We also congratulate the new Minister of Sports, John Enoh, for the deserving position of serving the sports ministry.
“I believe that things will begin to run smoothly as the minister gets his hands full on the many tasks of handling the sports ministry.
“Now that we are going for the Olympics in Paris in less than a year, the sports minister will have his hands full of activities,” he said.
Akinyele pointed out that the sports budget before the ministry was split into two had been meagre because the funds had to be shared by two ministries.
“Before now, various sports have been starved of funds because we have to share funds with the Youths Affairs, which mostly take the lion share of the ministry’s budget.
“Sports under this new arrangement as an independent ministry will have the opportunity to present its own budget and defend it. We will now know what comes in to sports development and what goes out
“The minister of sports can now concentrate on sports development alone because there are may things to be done,” he said.
Akinyele cited the example of the NBF, which he noted needed more funds for it’s various grassroots developmental programmes.
“Boxing is one of the highlights in Nigerian sports circle in the past years, as we have once dominated the scene in boxing both locally and internationally.
“Nigeria has produced boxers of repute in the good old days, but we have seen our fortunes nosediv because of many factors, which include inadequate funding.
“The Boxing Federation has been receiving meagre funding, while the situation has greatly hampered our grassroots developmental programmes.
“Nigeria is not lacking when it comes to talents because we can find as many boxers as possible around, but we lack sports infrastructure to develop them,” he said.
Akinyele also called on private organisations to return to sponsorship of sports which was the order of the day before the lull.
“The private organisations should also come to the aid of the boxing federation because this has not been the situation in the past.
“Many years ago, boxing had received immense support and sponsorships from corporate organisations such as National Oil, Mobil Oil, Shell Oil Development and also some of the serving and retired generals.
“So, if we want boxing to return to its former glory, then, all hands must be on deck, we need more sports infrastructure to train our boxers
“We need equipment such as boxing ring, gloves, punching bags, a good gymn and others. We also want the state association to encourage more sports infrastructural development in their state as well,” he said. (NAN)
