Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Mr Sunday Dare has urged private schools in the country to participate in national tournaments in order to widen the pool of potential athletes that can represent the country in international events. He further urged them to take part in the Nigeria University Games Association (NUGA),National Daily learnt.
Mr. Dare stated this on Tuesday when he received the Chairman of the Governing Council of Nile University, Professor Huseyin Sert, in his office in Abuja with a promise to create the necessary interface between private schools and sporting federations.
He said “We have federations that train athletes and during international tournaments they bring them to us. You can bring your athletes to us. They can compete for the country and even go for Olympics.
“We will create an interface between federations and Nile University. We are trying to develop a feeder process and I think Nile University and other private universities can feed into that,” Mr Dare urged.
The Minister explained that he expects such collaboration to open opportunities for schools noting that they can use the National Youth Games and National Sports Festival as scouting grounds for selecting students to benefit from their sports related scholarships.
Professor Huseyin Sert had told the Minister that Nile University was increasing the number of scholarships it offers to sportsmen as part of the school’s contribution to sports development and contribution to the Adopt-an-athlete initiative of the Minister.