Frank Efe
The Chairman of the National Sports Commission and Minister of Sports Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi has stress that uncompromising discipline is the only way to true success in every sphere of human endeavor.
Mallam Abdullahi said this today in Warri during a breakfast meeting with the Team Nigeria to the on-going maiden edition of the Africa Youth Athletics Championships Junior Category holding at the Warri City Stadium.
The Minister of Sports noted that no athlete can excel without making sacrifices in the form of keeping a firm training regime for at least ten years.
Mallam Abdullahi who charged the athletes who are under eighteen to ensure that they emerged victorious at the games said if they were keen on becoming world champions they must strive to sustain the training regime religiously.
He said that athletes who have been world champions trained for at least ten thousand hours before attaining the heights in whatever sports they were participating in.
Responding on behalf of Team Nigeria the President of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, Chief Solomon Ogba said that the team would do the nation proud as the technical crew and indeed the AFN had gone to the nooks and crannies of the nation to pick promising athletes that would do the nation proud in future engagements.
Chief Ogba said that the essence of the athletics championship was to prepare African athletes for future international meets especially after the continents poor show at the 2012 Olympic Games where countries like Nigeria failed to pick a medal.
Speaking on behalf of the athletes the Captain of Team Nigera Ahaefule promised the Minister and indeed Nigerians that they would not disappoint the nation as they hope to emerge winners of the maiden edition of the Africa Youth Athletics Championship Junior Category.
He said that the athletes have been given the best of training and it was left for them to excel on the tracks and assured that they would do everything within their powers to repay the confidence reposed in them to represent over sixty million youths in Nigeria.
Thirty five countries including Guinea, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Togo, Cameroun, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Egypt, Malawi, Eritrea, Benin Republic, Kenya, Morocco, Angola and hosts Nigeria are competing in the five day tournament.
