By Esther Egbe
Prince Thompson Lad Oladimeji, the Chairman, Kwara United Football Club and Chairman of Henry George Group is the life Patron of Sport Writers Association of Nigeria kwara chapter said recently that football among our youths, the way forward for Kwara United FC, how he feels being honoured by SWAN and how he spend his leisure time among others, National Daily learnt.
The renowned business man explained that with football at the grassroot level where he explained that football in primary and secondary school is no longer what it used to be back in the old days.
Prince Thompson said there is need to restructure the education system. “Sporting activities must be included in the school system starting from the primary school system because if they’re exposed to those things at an early àge, they will have the tendency to understand it better”.
“I have said it times without number that for so long, sport, not football alone has been abandoned in primary schools and when we are talking about grassroots, we must talk about the primary school. On football, it is number one when it comes to sport so it is important when we take it back to primary school, I mean the local primary schools, in the primary schools then, there were inter-school competitions till the local government and state levels.
“The under-15 boys did us proud and we have to expose them to the world that these are the young boys who have done this, they came second in the whole country which is a very good development, to encourage them, we have promoted three of them into the main team, they are going to be one of our new players which that will encourage others to do more and at the same time, during my submission to them, I made them realise the importance of education, that they should not be too freak of the their football success and abandon their education, as for me as a father and administrator, I would not allow that, I will monitor them in their education and also expose them to the football scene that is bigger than where they are.”
“When you have passion for something, you create the time, look at people like Otedola, Dangote, they still have time to support football despite the fact that they are very busy. In this game, I have realized a lot of things because we have touched a lot of lives, we have been able to move people away from crisis and the societies have seen that football is good, it unites people together and these are the things that make me develop interest in football”. He concluded