Why Nigeria needs to celebrate her athletes – Kwanta

President of Sports Hall of Fame Foundation, Nicholas Kwanta, has said Nigeria needs to celebrate her athletes in order to encourage more people to go into sports.

While speaking with Daily Trust at the MKO Abiola Stadium in Abuja on Monday, Kwanta lamented that many great athletes, who had made the country proud in their active time, have been forgotten.

He also said the country was not keeping records of her athletes’ achievements, stressing that many achievements by Nigerian athletes have not been documented over the years.

“It’s a shame we don’t have sports records even though we are the giants of Africa.

“Nigerians need to know the history of our sports.

“We can’t just be going for sporting events without archival records of our outings,” Kwanta said.

He disclosed that he had decided to step in and create an opportunity for athletes to be remembered by creating the Sports Hall of Fame and producing the Nigeria Sports Book of Record.

While saying he spent ten years in gathering materials for the book, Kwanta disclosed that he had invested over N60m in making the project a reality.

“The book is a compilation of history and achievements of sports persons in the country since 1884.

“The Hall of Fame is a phase of record keeping designed to hang the legacies and good deeds of sports people in the country,” said.

Kwanta said he had High Blood Pressure while trying to gather data for the book as people were not willing to give him information even as he was being asked to pay to get data needed for the project.

While thanking the Ministry of Youth and Sports for coming in to support the project, Kwanta said the revised edition of the book will be published soon while the first Sport Hall of Fame will come up after the coronavirus crisis.