By Agunloye Bashiru
From 2-14 April 2021, the focus of Lagos State is on Edo State for the 20th National Sports Festival. It is a period when future stars are expected to showcase their talent to the national limelight, and Team Lagos, with their budding athletes, has been on parade vying for honours with other participating states including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.
Coming from a fourth position at the last festival in Abuja in 2018, where they won146 medals with a breakdown showing 36 gold, 37 silver and 73 bronze medals, Team Lagos is out to up the ante of showing what the Centre of Excellence is made of with a target of at least 100 gold medals this time around.
There is no doubt that Lagos State has what it takes to meet this target judging from the support sports has been receiving since the coming of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu who has ensured that the athletes, coaches and officials are adequately taken care of.
The Governor has been doing this through the Lagos State Sports Commission, which has been in capable hands of the Executive Chairman, Mr. Sola Aiyepeku and the Director General, Mr. Oluwatoyin Gafaar. The duo have been consistently driving Lagos sports and steering the ship professionally to ensure that Team Lagos are battle ready for the hostilities at the Edo 2020 National Sports Festival.
While some states to Edo 2020 are exploiting the opportunities of the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports’ declaration that the biennial festival was open to all classes of participants, relying on foreign-based professionals to fight for honours, “We are going to Edo with wholly locally discovered, nurtured and monitored athletes, because we are a state that has always believed in identifying talents, nurture them to become future stars,” said the Director General of the Sports Commission.
“The future of our athletes is paramount to the government, that is why we would ensure that our athletes take the best out of the festival to get expose and develop their talents,” Gafaar said.
It is on record that Lagos State is the epicentre of sports in Nigeria because the state sticks to its principle of using home-grown athletes who are developed under the tutelage of the state’s grassroots development programmes over the years to prosecuting national competitions and Edo 2020 is not an exemption.
The Chairman of Lagos Sports Commission, Aiyepeku said: “We are going to the National Sports Festival in Edo State with athletes who have been consistently representing the state, won medals and employed in the service of Lagos State Government and still competing. We have never abandoned our own. Most of them have been given training grants monthly.
As responsible Sports Commission, we always exposed our athletes to competitive sporting events through both locally, national and international sporting competitions.”
This is the template of success Lagos sports is known for, and Governor Babajide Sanwo –Olu’s administration, like all his predecessors, has continually, through the Lagos State Sports Commission, been engaging the youth in the state using sports as a catalyst for empowering the teeming younger generation.
The cheering news, however, is that the Lagos State Government believes in the safety and welfare of its athletes. The government says has insured all athletes representing the state at the festival against the novel Coronavirus pandemic.
This means that parents should be rest assured that their wards would be safe as they showcase their God-given talents to make Lagos State proud in Edo State.
