Era of late preparation for Olympics is over – Dalung assures

There will no longer be late preparation for the Olympics and other quadrennial games, Solomon Dalung, the minister youth and sports has assured.

Dalung made this promise over the weekend in Lagos when he met with sports journalists, NAN reports.

According to him, the era Nigeria go into the Olympics with only one year or six months preparation is over.

He said the preparation must be complete six years or three at minimum.

Dalung said: “I am determined to ensure that we start early preparation for Tokyo 2020 by now.

“We can no longer go for the Olympics with only one year or six months preparation. It must be complete six years or three at minimum.”

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To achieve this, Dalung said programmes for athletes’ discovery and nurturing which had been abandoned would be revamped to enable the selection process and preparations for the Tokyo Games.

He said: “Basically, what we did with the National Youth Games knowing that it has been abandoned for a long time and knowing it gives us the opportunity to identify talents was to revamp it.

“What we did this year was to insist and think outside the box by generating funds for sponsorship for the National Youth Games and the potential that were identified was indeed amazing.

“Also, I have come up with accuracy that by the second quarter of next year, that every federation that is interested in participating in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics must give a clear profile of athletes it identified.

“This is for training to commence for Olympics 2020 by the second quarter of next year so that we will identify those athletes we are going to use for qualifications and subsequent training in anticipation of the Olympics.”

The minister said that if a federation was not prepared, it could not wake up mid-way and begin to say that they had gotten athletes.

According to him, his ministry won’t accept that.

He said: “Anybody willing to participate must be identified by second quarter of 2017, and a well-defined programme put in place to avoid low performances during the outing.

“We have this group of Nigerians that came with the idea of Olympics Trust Fund; they have approached the ministry. This is a private sector initiative but we are not giving them anything.

“They have started well by approaching Nigerians and people have started putting money in the trust fund. So far, so good, they told me somebody had given them N10 million which is in their account.

“We have listed out how the money will be deployed; certain percentages for grassroots, certain percentage for the training of the athletes and certain percentage for referring them for competition.

“I think that idea will play a major role in the situation we find ourselves, especially in this Olympics. So I think these are some of the initiatives we had evolved based on the experiences we had in the past.”

The minister also noted there was the need for a National Sport Trust Fund to reduce dependence on government for sports funding.

“If you take a look at most of the multi-nationals in Nigeria, they invest on nothing at all but they spend most of their money on most of the teams and clubs in Europe.

“They need to also invest little from what they get from Nigeria into this trust fund.

“It is something we have discussed with the leaders of the National Assembly because everybody is tired of all these things that have been happening,’’ he said

Meanwhile, Dalung has denied reports making rounds that the federal government and NFF never knew Super Falcons of Nigeria could win the Africa Women Cup of Nations trophy in Cameroon.

In an audio piece obtained by Premium Times, the minister admitted that the sit-in-hotel protest of the Falcons wouldn’t have occurred if the NFF had put into consideration the Falcons chances of winning the African title but emphasized he was quoted out of context.