Sports’ Director, Mr. Bayo Oluwatoki
The Director of Sports, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Mr. ‘Bayo Oluwatoki, has advanced reasons for Nigeria’s dismal performance at the just-concluded Olympic Games, held in the City of London, United Kingdom.
Mr. Oluwatoki, in a chat with FUNAAB Bulletin noted that the major problem confronting Nigerian sport, was the lack in the capacity to adequately plan ahead.
“We have refused to learn from our past mistakes and if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”, he added.
The Sports’ Director said the technical exposure of Nigerian athletes is nothing to write home about and urgently deserving attention by sports’ administrators.
He expressed dismay that the medals table showed that a country like Ethiopia was conspicuous on the table while Nigeria was nowhere to be found.
“Until we become more realistic in our approach and planning, we may not achieve our aim”, he said.
In another development, Mr. Oluwatoki has said that the University is set to participate in 13 sports events during the forthcoming Pre-NUGA qualifying games, holding at the Sports’ Complex of the University of Lagos, in September.
The competing sports include: Football, Basketball, Chess, Squash, Handball, Volleyball, Cricket, Hockey, Taekwondo, Tennis, Table-Tennis, Badminton and Athletics.
On the level of preparation for the games, he stated that before the students went on break, the Directorate had started preparing and now that they are on break, individual training is on-going, and will continue when the students resumed.
“This time around, we want to go out in all the sports so that we can compete in all games at NUGA in November and we are optimistic of qualifying in all the sports”, he added.
Mr. Oluwatoki, however, enjoined all and sundry to see sports as co-curricular activities and not just extra-curricular, explaining that most of the nation’s recognized Universities became prominent through sports.