The Lagos State Commissioner for Youth, Sports and Social Development, Hon Enitan Oshodi, has assured sports fans of Lagos State Government's resolve to continue to pursue its grassroots sports development polices.
Speaking exclusively to Saturday Mirror, the commissioner revealed that the gains of grassroots sports development are enormous because it helps in the discovery of talented athletes in the country.
Enitan who also doubles as the President of the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation also added that plans are on the way by the state to host more sporting competitions before the end of the year, in order to give some of the athletes discovered by the state the required exposure in their chosen career.
"Our focus has been on grassroots development of sports in the state and we are working with thousands of schools in the state in a bid to getting a lot of these young ones to participate in sports at their young age and to discover the talent they have. "We have put a structure in place whereby we have regular events and training for these young children and for us, that was our best achievement at the Eko 2012.
"We have really had rapid improvement at the National Sports Festival by placing third at Eko 2012, but we are still working hard to improve.
Hopefully we believe that our sports development programmes will continue to bear fruits in the near future," he said. Oshodi also threw more light on some of the remaining sports programmes of his ministry for the year. "We have so many quarterly sporting programmes in the state that are aimed at giving grassroots sports development a great boost.
"Currently, our sporting facilities are up to date and this is one thing we remain grateful to His Excellency, Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola for his support. The sporting equipment that Lagos State have now are of world standard and can be used to host international sporting events.
"However, we are looking at hosting major national and international sporting events, between August and the end of the year to compliment the Governor's Tennis Tournament that has been running for 12 years. "We also hope to carry out some major tournaments across basketball, table tennis and tennis, to mention but a few," Oshodi concluded.
National Mirror