Olympics / African Games: Nigeria’s Sports minister leads retreat on athletes performance

Nigeria’s Honourable Minister of Sports Development, Senator John Owan Enoh is leading a ministerial retreat on athletes performance at the 2024 Olympic and 2024 Africa Games, which focuses on addressing some of the factors responsible for the poor performance of Nigerian athletes at international sports competitions.

In his inaugural address on Wednesday, Senator Enoh emphasised the imperative nature of evaluating strategies pertinent to training regiments, athlete and official codes of conduct, anti-doping education, and the pivotal roles of National Sports Federations in ensuring podium success at the 2024 Africa Games in Ghana and the forthcoming Olympic/Paralympic Games in Paris, France.

“I would like to commend my resource persons who have been working assiduously behind the scene towards Nigeria’s preparation and participation to podium success,” the Minister said. “I have implicit confidence in the capability of the team to make this retreat meaningful.”

He said that the Ministry of Sports Development will use the retreat to address performance-hindering issues such as lack of identifiable process to improve performance of athletes, lack of professionalism from sports administrators, athletes and athletes support personnel, funding and late release of funds, athletes’ preparation (in terms of good training programmes), anti-doping education, and lack of scientific approach to training programmes.

Enoh added that the team of resource persons will henceforth function as the Ministerial Podium Performance monitoring team.

The team will monitor the preparations of federation athletes for the 2024 Africa Games and Olympic/Paralympic Games in Accra, Ghana and Paris, France respectively. He concluded that all monitoring activities are to be reported to his office on a regular basis.

He declared the retreat open and reiterated that success in sports is a barometer for evaluating effective and meaningful governance at all levels.