The establishment of functional sports academies in the six geo-political zones of the country has been identified as the only option that \u00a0can \u00a0restore Nigeria to her past glory \u00a0as the pride of Africa in sports.<\/p>\n
Reacting in a chat with\u00a0 newsmen in Enugu, \u00a0regarding\u00a0 the poor performance of African teams in the just- concluded\u00a0 FIFA \u00a0U-17 World Cup in Nigeria, a renowned sports administrator, Barrister Ndidi Ejimofo explained that her envisaged academies would train students in all aspects of sports, including golf, athletics, hockey, tennis, swimming, wrestling, boxing\u00a0 and\u00a0 football. \u00a0\u00a0 According to Mrs. Ejimofo, who is the Head of Sports at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus (UNEC) ,the \u00a0introduction of the academies in each of the six \u00a0\u00a0zones would also solve the problems arising from state of origin as each zone would be well represented.<\/p>\n
In her words, \u00a0\u201dEntry into the academies should be by competition, just like that of JAMB and products of the academies would be well grounded in education with more emphasis on sports and scholarship scheme could be introduced for indigent students\u201d,.<\/p>\n
\u00a0She described the Golden Eaglets as magicians, having come from poor start to become a formidable force, \u00a0adding\u00a0 that, African teams had failed to use the hot weather to their advantage to muscle out their European counterparts in the tournament.<\/p>\n
She reasoned \u00a0that with the academies in place, the nation could boast of good squads of well trained athletes and coaches, stressing that for optimum performance, the academy institutes must have facilities for training, including mini Olympic \u00a0stadia. \u201cI expect that the academies in River-rine areas should have good swimming pools while those in the North should have facilities to train long distance runners as those in Kenya, because of their proximity to the desert\u201d, she further remarked.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Ejimofo,\u00a0 also noted that sports academies were already in operation in other developed nations, \u00a0adding that it was high time Nigeria introduced same in order to catch them young , \u00a0even \u00a0as she frowned at the fire brigade approach by the nation\u2019s \u00a0sports administrators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The establishment of functional sports academies in the six geo-political zones of the country has been identified as the only option that \u00a0can \u00a0restore Nigeria to her past glory \u00a0as the pride of Africa in sports. Reacting in a chat with\u00a0 newsmen in Enugu, \u00a0regarding\u00a0 the poor performance of African teams in the just- concluded\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}