Nigeria in the past three decades has made a remarkable improvement in the sports industry by winning vital medals in football, boxing, athletics, wrestling, weightlifting, taekwando, chess, table tennis, and others in the local and international tournaments.
A recent trend noticeable under the Goodluck Jonathan's Administration has been the encouragement being given to sports men and women who emerged victorious in sporting events. With this, and coupled with the restoration of peace, development and maintenance of sporting facilities, our sports fortunes have increased more than ever before in this clime.
It can be recalled that the country's sports sector was entangled in leadership tussle which hindered the desired progress; but the resolution of most of the issues by the present administration has restored our sports fortune and once again, sports has returned as the nation's unifying factor. This has spurred the Federal Ministry of Sports and the National Sports Commission to work as a team to boost the image of the country and create employment through sports.
Cataloguing our recent achievements in sports, one can begin with 2012, when Nigeria emerged the overall winners in the Senior Africa Athletics Championship in Poto-Novo after 14 years; won the Senior Africa Weightlifting completion in Kenya while she also, won a lot of medals in Paralympics, Chess, Wrestling, among others.
Despite the giant strides achieved in sports in 2012, the Federal Government realized that many Nigerians were not satisfied particularly in the areas of football and our sports' team's unimpressive outing at the London Olympic. The unsatisfactory performance led to a Presidential Retreat where new sporting landscape was identified and charted for short and medium term priority sports as well as understanding the critical barriers for achieving the nation's potentials in the sector.
To sum up the new vision, the Minister of Sports recently revealed that "Our commitment is to become the best sporting nation in Africa; be among the top four sporting nations in the Commonwealth and; ultimately rule the World." He said, that the vision was not only realistic, "It is also achievable with hard work, greater sense of purpose, and dedication."
The Federal Government may be assessed in this field based on greater participation of the nation in sports for recreation, local and international competitions, strengthening of sports through key policy actions initiated and implemented for producing future champions and promotion of our image abroad.
The strengthening of sports has also been rightly identified to be through key policy actions initiated such as encouraging grassroots' sports development through sports academies, schools' sports, integration of local players into national teams for international competitions, timely preparations for sporting events, training of sports officers, entrenchment of principles of transparency, efficiency and accountability in the management of our sports federations, prompt fulfillment of promises made to players and teams, surprise visits to players during their training by the President and things like the President's skype video calls to the Super Eagles (the national football team) in the middle of the (African Confederations Cup) AFCON 2013 Football Tournament held in South Africa were among the needed magic that can and indeed have transformed our sports industry to an enviable position.
Nigeria's winning of the Africa Cup of Nations Football Tournament in 2013 after 19 years, hosting of and emerging victorious in the first Junior Africa U-17 Athletics, the qualification of the Golden Eaglets and Fly Eagles for the 2013 U-17 and U-20 World championships in Algeria Morocco respectively, and various others were attestations of commitment of the present regime to sports development in the country.
There is also a need that we and friends of Nigeria to support the Federal Government to continue in its excellent administration of the sports sector.
Obed Atuora is an Assistant Chief Information Officer and sent this piece in from the National Press Center.
Federal Ministry of Information (FMI) Nigeria