The Principal of Community Secondary School Ibotirem in Andoni Local Government, Mr Wilson Saturday Eneyo, has bemoaned the penchant of most secondary schools in the rural areas to neglect supporting activities.

According to Mr Eneyo in an interview recently, the  last time his school conducted an inter-house sports was in 2008 and since then, they could not conduct any because of lack of funds. He also said that in the school there was no sports equipment and what he met in 2007 were only javeline and discus. In order to encourage the students, the school authority had to go and borrow some sports equipment from other schools  to enable them conduct inter-house sports competition.

“The last time we conducted inter-house sports competition in our school was in 2008 and since then, we have not done any because of logistics and lack of sports facilities.

“The last time we held inter-house sports competition, we went to other schools to borrow some sports equipment, the only ones we have are only javeline and discus presently. This is not encouraging at all,” Eneyo stated.

He went further to call on the state government to come to their aid so as to help them revitalise sports in the school.

“We are saying that government suppose to come to our aid to help us revitalize sports in our school curriculum especially in the rural areas  where things are very hard with parents. We are just managing the situation”.

Eneyo, however, suggested that these challenges could be well addressed if the government was committed by remitting some funds to the school for this purpose. That during their days in secondary  school it was a normal event.

“Government should device a means of helping schools so that we can find a way of conducting inter-house sports regularly by remitting some funds to schools for this purpose”.

“In our days in secondary school it was a normal affair in the school system, almost in every academic session every year inter-house sports competition had been regular. The mystery was what I did not know because we were all students then, the principal said.

As a community school and also as a new principal that knows the importance of sports in the life of every student, he would call for a PTA meeting and seek for a way forward on the issue.

Meanwhile, the Sports Master, Prince Stephen Okwan, supported the position of the principal and stated that the school had been facing a lot of challenges in the area of sports programmes.

Gold Monday