7 hours ago
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LAGOS – Aside being designed for ensuring physical fitness and healthy competition especially among students, inter house sports by secondary schools is a fundamental basis for grassroots sports development in any thoughtful clime.
Many countries of the world appear at the Olympics, continental sporting engagements and win numerous laurels and of course, such achievements do not come without proper planning, it is give and take; they are results of years and months of envisioned planning and careful execution.
In Nigeria, presently, the same cannot be said about the sports development. Gone were the golden days of Mary Onyealis, Innocent Egbunikes, Chidi Imos, and many others like them, they were products of grassroots development, but today there is excessive reliance on already made athletes, tired and retired legs, even in football, no wonder, a country as blessed, as populated, and as financially blessed as Nigeria could go to the Olympics and come back without a medal.
This worrisome situation and how to solve it are part of the reasons for any school inter-house sports.
No wonder on February 26, 2025, the Command Day Secondary School of the Nigerian Armed Forces Resettlement Centre, Oshodi, organized their 14th Inter House Sports which attracted who is who and lovers of sports in the Nigerian military and the wider society.
During the event, the young men and women displayed an amazing class of talents which if properly harnessed would earn Nigeria gold in the nearest future in any sporting engagement. Besides that, on the comic side, parents, teachers, school management, ranks and file of the military have opportunities to compete and won laurels for themselves.
In the end the Red House bagged the over all first, Purple House came second, while the Blue House picked the third position.
Speaking at the event which took place at the Air Marshall Isiaka Amao Sports Complex, Nigerian Armed Forces Resettlement Centre, Oshodi, Lagos, the Director Institute of Army Education (IAE) Nigerian Army Cantonment Ikeja, Brigadier-General D. Dieke who represented the Special Guest of Honour at the event, Corps Commander, Education, Nigerian Army, Major General A.P. Oguntola, said sports administrators in the country should wake up in order to nurture young and patriotic athletes who can win laurels for Nigeria.
He said representing his boss at an event like this is a great opportunity, it is a rare privilege especially I am lover of children, I mean seeing children take time off their monotonous academic process to be here to expose them fully outside normal environment which is very good and I have to do everything possible to support them, it channels the immense energy of the youth towards constructive uses, diverting their attention from the menace of societal vices like cultism, drug addition, joining bad gangs, herdsmen attacks, kidnapping and all other vices. This is a good distraction of their minds from these vices.
So as my core commander who sent me he believes in the reformation of the society through catching the generation very young.
Naturally I am attached to sports, naturally I a patriotic Nigerian, we are talking about the diversification of the economy, and if you look at creative economy, sports is taking over it is no more about if you look at those who hold the money, who influence the society, you see they come from sports, and other aspects of creative economy like music, so sports assumes a prominence in our society that we cannot neglect ant longer. We must encourage them, we must identify with them, we must give them the reason to root their passion these areas so that they will be able mm explain their potential for the benefit of themselves, their families and to the nation at large.
Speaking on how an inter house sports could be deployed to end medal-less Olympics by Nigerian representatives he said that it is all a function of sports administrators. “It is all a function of sports administration, the political will to do something good. Imagine a country immensely gifted like Nigeria returning from Olympic without a medal especially when you juxtapose it against the fact that we have always gone and won medals, it means that something is wrong in the way we handle such issues. And the resin is not far- fetched, formerly the likes of Chidi Imo, Innocent Egbunike; all these people that won Olympic medals for us, they were picked young. Do but if you look at it now you see that grassroots sports, no person is emphasizing on them. We depend, including football, on the same old tired legs, who managed to broker into what they call professional realm. And each time we go and carry them, despite the fact that they are expiring.”
When we come down to these young one whom we can mold to compete favourably, unless we do that we would continue to return without medals, because every time we still go to these old ones who are forced to come, some of them even go to the Olympics without coming to Nigeria, and return to their base in either Germany, US or wherever, you don’t expect such people to hold you that loyalty that would make them to compete patriotically, but these children when they development from the environment you unconsciously build in them the love for the environment, the passion to bring laurel to the environment that nurtured them. So we must come back to what we are doing now and harness them, sports administrators should take care of this. We should harness them supported by the political masters; we have immense potential who can win Olympics for Nigeria.
Your message to Nigerians and spectators, he said let them continue supporting sports, and identifying with sports, and sponsor sports.
Commandant, Command Day Secondary School, Oshodi, Lt Col Danjuma Saidu, was especially delighted that the dignitaries he invited for the sporting event attended the event en mass. “I feel so excited and happy that the invited guests and personalities invited graced this occasion, you can see the athletic prowess displayed by the students, I am very happy.”
On his ability to draw the creme de la creme in the military and across the nation, he said, “They are critical stakeholders, in fact everybody should be a stakeholder of a school system, because you are nurturing the successor generations, so their presence here would increase the moral of the students. That is why they deemed it fit to be here today.”
While speaking on the significance of infrastructure in the overall development of the child, Saidu said, “The school system is all about the children, the children in this case whatever we do here is student centred, we make sure they have a conducive learning environment, nothing should stop them from achieving that. So in the light of that we put all these infrastructures in place so that they would have a very good, wonderful learning environment.”
On his advice to students and other schools, “I will tell them to emulate what our school is doing because school system is a holistic environment, it is not just academic, they have to include extracurricular activities just as we witnessed today so that we have all round students that are well nurtured that will represent the country in the future.”
He also advised the parents of the students to keep believing in the Management and Staff of Command Day Secondary School as they take care of the academic development and character formation of their children. “The parents should keep on believing in us as we nurture their children to take over from them.”
Lieutenant John Swago* Naiya*, the intervhous sports have been successful, we thank God for that, we pray should will keep us alive to see another one.
The school did very well,
Bamigboye Julius Kali* Assistant Vice Principal Academic, Junior School, who impressed joy at the event which he stated was well organized also spoke on the overall aim of an inter house sports. “He said the whole essence of inter house sports is to groom the students, and nurture future sporting materials, in a sports of this magnitude I had expected ministry of sports and youth’s development to attend to see materials, we need to catch them young, from the grassroots.”
Lieutenant John Swago* Naiya*, the intervhous sports have been successful, we thank God for that, we pray should will keep us alive to see another one.
The school did very well,
Bamigboye Julius Kali* Assistant Vice Principal Academic, Junior School, who impressed joy at the event which he stated was well organized also spoke on the overall aim of an inter house sports. “He said the whole essence of inter house sports is to groom the students, and nurture future sporting materials, in a sports of this magnitude I had expected ministry of sports and youth’s development to attend to see materials, we need to catch them young, from the grassroots.”
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