Nigeria’s Cabinet has okayed the construction of a National Sports Medicine and High Performance Centre for the country.
The Centre is to be located at the Moshood Abiola Stadium, Abuja.
The construction of the edifice is to cost the nation the sum of N2.4 billion and it is to be completed within three years.
Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Sunday Dare, disclosed this to State House Correspondents.
He said: “Over time and in the last past decades, one of the drawbacks of sports development and athletes development has been the lack of a High Performance Centre.
“Global sports development practice has High Performance Centre as a major component of conditioning its athletes.
“It takes your athletes beyond just raw talent to some level of sports science and precision and the lack of that scientific input into our sports development over time has not helped us to reach the maximum podium performance that can be attained by our athletes.”
Boost Atheletes Perfomance
He stated that when the Centre fully comes on board, it would boost the performance of atheletes thus reaping more laurels for the country.
“We have seen, particularly in Kenya, where we have something close to that and in South Africa, we have something close to that, what their performances are.
“As we speak, more than 80% of the equipment that will be needed, some of them, digital equipment, arealready secured and obtained at Moshood Abiola Stadium.
What we need is to construct the specialised building where we’re going to instal all of this.
“And if this is done, the number one High Performance Centre in the whole of the African continent is the one in South Africa and if we’re able to complete the one in Abuja here, that will be the second one in Africa.
“The company that got the award for the contract is message Jamec West Africa Limited Nfor 2.4 billion naira with a completion period of three years,” he said.
Confidence Okwuchi
