Joel Ajayi
The House Committee on Sports has called on the Nigerian Olympic Committee NoC to step up athletes’ preparations to bring a superlative outing in the forthcoming 2024 Olympics in Paris and surpass the Atlanta 1996 feat.
Speaking on Thursday at the National Assembly complex when the Nigerian Olympics Committee appeared before the committee, the House Committee Chairman Hon. Ekene Adam expressed that the reason for the invitation is to know how prepared and how ready the NOC is regarding the forthcoming 2024 Olympics Paris.
“We invited the NOC to know the level of preparedness for the Olympic Games if there is any challenge they are facing, and how we can help them solve it so that Nigerian athletes will have total focus when competing for medals. We want to do everything possible to make sure that Nigeria records the best performance in France.
“We have identified funding as a major challenge and one of the ways to solve the problem is to sponsor a bill where the budget for preparations of athletes for Olympic Games will be captured each year.
“The funds will then be disbursed to the Sports Federations by the Ministry to ease their tasks when chasing qualification tickets in different international competitions across the world.”
However, the Chairman House Committee on Sports, Hon Ekene Adams along with the members of the Committee proposed that a bill be sponsored where funds will be captured in the annual budget of the Sports Ministry and distributed to different Sports Federations for better preparations of Nigerian athletes.
In his comment, the President of the Nigeria Olympics Committee (NOC) Engineer Habu Gummel revealed that the committee is not relenting in its effort to ensure team Nigeria performs well come August in Paris.
According to him, we intend to go to Paris and break the jinx of 1996 with the support of everyone.
However, he identified a lack of funds as a major setback why some of the athletes struggle to compete with others in the international championship.
When the House committee asked the NOC if they have received any funds from the ministry regards Preparation for the Paris 2024 Engr. Gumel replied: “we are yet to receive a dime from the sports ministry”
