The 11th All African Games have come and gone, but the echoes lingers on, particularly, for Nigeria, the second best place or adjudged team in the competition.
Despite the level of shabby preparation from Nigeria, individual athletes representing the country faired well to have given Nigeria the best result ever of recent times. This means that, team Nigeria should prepare in earnest against the forth or next meeting, so as to topple Egypt the overall winner of the competition.
This could be done if the stakeholders of sports and the official together with the Nigeria Athletes Federation and Nigeria Sports Commission would released fund and start an early camping, preparation schedule for the athlete to be mentally focus and ready for the next meet.
But for the foreign athletes, it would have been another story of woe. Thanks to our Nigerian foreign athletes.
It is high time Nigeria should go on talent discovery, to replace ageing ones. The situation of one athletes competing for four or three events is uncalled for, like in the case of Blessing Okagbara.
School sports should be encouraged as that is the sure way to generate or discover more talents in the shores of Nigeria than depending on ready made foreign athletes.
Nigeria is blessed with all types of athletes in all the sporting events in the sports family.
But the country unpreparedness to look inward, or embark on discovering and encouraging athletes from the grassroots is the main problem. ###
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