A founding member of traditional sports in Nigeria, Mallam Elias Yusuf, has said indigenous sports should be made mandatory for all states that are taking part in the National Sports Festival.
The traditional sports enthusiast’s clarion call is coming on the heels of the raging controversy over the decision of the Federal Ministry of Youths and Sports Development to remove traditional sports from the National Sports Festival.
Although traditional sports which became an integral part of the biennial games beginning from the 1998 edition in Owerri, the Imo state capital, featured at the last NSF in Benin City, for inexplicable reasons, indigenous sports have been excluded from the next edition scheduled for next month in Asaba, Delta State.
In his reaction to the contentious decision which has not gone down with traditional sports practitioners, Yusuf said any National Sports Festival without traditional sports will be incomplete.
He said “During the 2003 All Africa Games in Abuja, our slogan was that ‘All Africa Games is incomplete without traditional sports’. The same thing applies to the National Sports Festival. Any NSF that excludes traditional sports is incomplete.
“Traditional sports are the sons of the soil. We are the indigenous people. All over the world, countries have their indigenous sports that are always included in their programmes. Events like running, jumping, throwing and skipping in athletics originated from the people of Greece from where the Olympic Games started. These countries developed their indigenous sports and today, we want to dump our own to concentrate on what we imported.”
Yusuf, therefore, reiterated that to accelerate the development of trado sports in Nigeria, it should be made mandatory for every state to feature in at least two indigenous sports in the National Sports Festival.
“My appeal is that they should please make traditional sports compulsory for all states. If you want to register for the festival, you must register at least two traditional sports, that is, one individual event and one team event.
“However, if you decide to register for all the five events, abula, langa, dambe, Ayo and Kokowa, that will be fantastic. We must do everything possible to develop our indigenous sports,” he maintained.
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