The dearth of new national records in our sporting events today and the poor discovery of young talents to replace the ageing ones have been attributed to age falsifications. Speaking to Imo Trumpeta in a special interview, the Area Commander, Nigeria Police Force, Owerri, ACP Felix Kigigha (KSC) who also is a FIFA/CAF referee instructor revealed that the constant age falsification by our athletes in various sports have made it very impossible for national records to be broken as it used to be in the 70s and 80s when we had the Sunday Badas and Ezinwa brothers etc. ACP Felix who also played active football through his school days up to club levels where he played for the Marines FC in Calabar among other teams before retiring to sports administration to help discover the young talents and groom them into fit athletes. He did inform also that some coaches in our states today are no longer interested in working with the talents from schools and grassroots instead they prefer working with already made athletes to make their job easy. Kigigha further stated that all these factors among other issues have contributed to the dearth of records being broken during national sporting events. He lamented that during the just concluded National Sports Festival in Lagos tagged ‘Eko 2012’, cases of falsifications by athletes who have appeared in certain events for more than four times were recorded even face that have attended the festival for about ten years kept appearing again and again. He asked “how can the younger talents be encouraged and also be discovered for development when we do not have the culture of rejuvenating and training the young athletes right from their schools?” “Unless we decide to re-orient our philosophy of life we will continue to get it wrong”.
“We must stop selecting our athletes based on tribal sentiments, religious differences and personal issues for us to be able to get the right talents for the right sports. We should go back to the grass roots and discover more of Peter Rufais, Richard Owubokiris, Stephen Keshis, Chioma Ajunwas, Mary Onyealis, Falilat Ogunkoyas etc” ACP Kigigha asserted…
To be concluded next week.
