The Nigeria Senate Committee on Sports Development, in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Youth Development, has launched a National Sports and Economic Empowerment Programme.
The programme, with the theme: “Nigerian Youth Economic Engagement and De-Radicalization Programme (NIYEEDEP)”, was officially flagged off at the Senate building, National Assembly on Wednesday.
Presiding over the event, the Deputy Chairman of the Senate Committee on Sports Development ,Senator Ned Munir Nwoko, emphasized the programme’s focus on discovering young Nigerian talents.
“The essence of this competition is to try and discover young talents. There are many young talents out there in different parts of the country but they are never given the opportunity because nobody knows them, nobody has heard of them”, Senator Nwoko remarked.
He said the Committee’s interest in NIYEEDEP was due to partnerships with international stakeholders, particularly Germany-based football academies, which were keen on identifying promising Nigerian youths for training and potential professional development in football.
“Some of the partners are foreign, specifically German-based. They have football academies and are looking at how they can identify the very best of our young ones to be trained and hopefully become professional footballers”, he noted.
The Lawmaker representing Delta North senatorial district, linked the programme’s goals with his own Sports University of Nigeria (SUN), which aimed at combining sports with education.
He stressed the University’s commitment to ensuring that students received a dual focus on athletic and academic pursuits.
“The whole idea of the University is to give young ones the opportunity of combining sports and education. It is not an academy; it’s a full-fledged University”, he said.
“For example, if we discover young talent at 16 years old who want to go to my University to play football, it is not enough for them to play football. The University made it mandatory for them to take another degree while conjunction with football.”
Addressing the challenges many athletes face upon retirement, Senator Ned Nwoko emphasized that Sports University graduates would have academic qualifications to fall back to.
“Most of our sportsmen, when they finish their sports career, they don’t have much to do because they don’t have much education. But with the University partnering with this initiative, we will be able to produce young ones who will not only be good at sports but also have academic qualifications”.
“We are hoping that this particular initiative will, at the end of the exercise, identify some young talents across the country. Those of them that are extremely good will be supported to go abroad, train further, and hopefully represent Nigeria in the national team”. he added.
Senator Ned Nwoko further explained that the NIYEEDEP initiative was expected to attract wide interest from various groups and football clubs nationwide, providing young Nigerians with the opportunity to showcase their talents and contribute to national development through sports and education.
The Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, also emphasized the inclusivity of the talent search. “This talent hunt is open to everybody with interest in football; they should come together, be productive, and do better”, Olawande said in his remarks during the public unveiling.
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