President of the Nigeria Judo Federation, Timothy Nsirim believes returning to school sports is the only remedy to Nigeria’s dwindling fortunes in sports.
The Rivers born administrator faulted government’s negligence to school sports through which talents have been discovered in the past.
Nisirim added that the dearth of sporting facilities in the modern-day school is a far cry from what they had during his school days.
“Government should declare state of emergency in sports so that we will go back to our school days when we used to have sporting activities and programmes,” said Nisirim.
“There were inter-house sports competition, like javelin , tennis, shot put, football, discuss, athletics etc. At the moment, it is no more and you dont get to see track and field in schools these days,” he lamented.
Nsirim is confident that the trend can be upturned with a quick response from the government in implementing and enforcing policies that will improve sporting activities in schools.
“I think state assemblies have a role to play, make laws as a matter of urgency to our primary and secondary school where talents will be discovered, “said Nisirim.
He also advised government to recruit teachers with Physical and Health Education /Human Kinetics background so as to teach school pupils the basics in sports.
