A sports administrator,
Ewa Henshaw, has appealed to national sports federations to stick to their annually laid-down sports programmes to enable state associations key in without disrupting their own activities.
Henshaw, Secretary of the Adopt-A-Talent Sports Project of the Lagos State Government, made the appeal in Lagos.
He told newsmen that the imposition of national championships on state associations would disrupt the states’ sports events.
The secretary, while speaking on his agency’s programmes for 2013 and 2014, said the agency did not carry out all its planned programmes because of national ones.
“Most of the agency’s programmes for the outgoing year were jettisoned for national ones.
“When a federation at the beginning of the year forwards its programme to associations, it is difficult for states not to plan on the basis of that.
“States have to accommodate those events which were not in the usual annual national federation’s calendar.
“However, as for Lagos, it is difficult not to attend national events. And that is why our agency’s programmes were put on hold to make funds available for national events.
“And that is also why some states do not participate in some national competitions, for the reason of unavailability of funds for the unplanned event,’ Henshaw said.
He expressed regrets about the situation which had led to the state’s athletes not participating in maiden National Youth Games (NYG) holding in Abuja from December 5 to 15.
“It was all due to non-availability of funds as the state only got to know about the event five weeks ago,’’ Henshaw said.
He then appealed to sports federations to put a stop to living in a world of unplanned events, saying this would always affect programmes by state sports bodies.