Habu Gumel
Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) President, Habu Gumel, has stated that the committee used its just concluded annual general meeting in Abuja to re-evaluate the performance of the nation’s sport through the various sport associations and plan for the packed 2017, 2018 and 2019 calendars.
“All the games – the Commonwealth Youth Games in 2019, All Africa Youth Games in 2018, the All Africa Games in 2019 amongst others – must be prepared for from now. We must have a long-term plan, to prevent scurrying around confused when the games are near.
“I was in Tokyo and discovered that more than 40 mini-Olympic villages were in place, with prospective hosts inspecting the facilities.
“We will visit Tokyo in January to go make our own arrangements; we will not wait for 2020.
“We are not working alone; the Ministry of Youth & Sport Development is with us and is getting detailed reports on what we are doing, so that they can give us all the support. Also, the sport federations are being carried along.”
Gumel called on corporate organisations to support the nation’s sport initiatives to ensure that the nation’s contingent to any of the international meets performs creditably.
“They need to give us all the support they can, to cushion the effort the government is making. This is the truth.”
He conceded that the elections for many associations were close and that the NOC would do all in its power to ensure that in-fighting are kept at a minimum and, as a result, do not negatively affect the activities lined up for the year.
“We will apply logic and diplomacy as civilized people and everything will be fine. We must do better in the coming years than we did in 2016,” he assured.
