By: Gracious Akujobi
The National Sports Commission (NSC) has given a three-week deadline to Games Masters and Mistresses in the country to register 80, 000 school children for the pilot phase of the Rhythm N’ Play programme.
Ohimai Amaize, Special Adviser to Minister of Sports on Youth, School and Grassroots Sports, gave the deadline at the end of a two-day “Train the Trainers” workshop for the discovery of sports kids.
“They should be able to give us feedback within the next three weeks on the progress of work and challenges they encountered,” he said.
Prompt News Online reports that the campaign is a sports development plan of the Nigeria Academicals Sports Committee (NASCOM).
The programme also intends to strengthen school sports by introducing two million kids nationwide into sports within two years.
According to Amaize, “strategies had been put in place to take care of challenges that could arise from the execution of the pilot phase of the programme.
“If there are challenges, we have an open line communication channel with the games masters.
“We have 12 zonal task teams that have been set up. The games masters will reports to these zonal task teams, while the task teams report back to us.
“The games masters can communicate to us their challenges because they have direct access to us.
“The games masters are expected to register 1,000 school children per state within the next three weeks.
“What this means is that every games master here is expected to visit 10 schools in their state before three weeks.
Amaize pointed out that the public holiday witnessed by schools across the federation had delayed the commencement of the programme.
In a related development Gbenga Elegbeleye, the Director General of the National Sports Commission (NSC) has called on the participants to ensure that the target of the programme was achieved.
Elegbeleye who was represented by Alhassan Yakmut, Director of Grassroots Sports Development in the NSC urged the games masters to surpass government’s two million target for the programme.
“We are very sure that within your domain the strategy will be ward by ward, school by school and local government by local government.
“We believe in active collaboration and partnership with stakeholders who will add value to any policy of transformation that has been enacted especially in this transformation regime.
“As members of the first disciples that will win the souls of others in this particular area of endeavour, we are expecting that you do not pollute the objective of this exercise.
“There is no provision for Naira and Kobo but there is provision for morality and decency and I tell you, you can open an account in heaven with morality and decency,’’ Elegbeleye said.
No fewer than 30 games masters and mistresses from secondary school across the country were presented with certificate of participation.
