Minister of Youth and Sports Barrister Solomon Dalung has said that a recent report credited to him in a national daily and a radio station that athletes didn’t need training to win medals but a winning mentality was false and with an intent to create mischief.
The minister who is in Rio to support athletes taking part in the 2016 Paralympic Games slammed the practice of Yellow Journalism by some writers, which he said has contributed to the poor development of the sports industry.
Speaking from Rio, Barrister Dalung said he did not grant a one-on-one interview with any electronic medium and challenged the writers to quote him right.
“The last interview I granted was at the flag-off of the NCC Tennis league at the Abuja National Stadium. I was asked to compare the performance of Nigerian athletes at the just concluded Olympics and the ongoing Paralympics and I said that the performance of Nigerian athletes at the Paralympic Games has established the fact that apart from the right training there was also need for the determination to excel. I said that they all trained under the same conditions like the Olympic athletes. That, apart from not having adequate preparations, what then can we attribute to the performance of the Paralympic athletes who have done so well at the Games . That, if their argument was lack of good training, the Paralympic athletes went through the same. In fact they trained here in Nigeria and I asked what was the secret? This was what I said to the journalists who were at the stadium for the tennis event”.
The Minister urged sports writers to verify their reports and desist from writing defamatory stories that were capable of bringing people to public ridicule or disparage them in the eyes of right thinking people.
“We need to go back and do a proper X-Ray of the two circumstances to be able to make the best of a bad bargain because the poor preparation was created due to paucity of funds, but the Paralympic athletes are making Nigerians proud here in Rio, ” he said.
The minister also used the occasion of Eid El Kabir to preach the message of love, peace, compassion and kindness to Nigerians especially the youths.
“The current economic recession has a relationship with the manner public affairs was managed in the past. We are not making any excuses for our inadequacies but we will definitely place the yearnings and aspirations of our people dutifully as our priority. The absence of strong institutions has been our national predicament which has affected negatively, policy sustainability. We appeal for more tolerance and your understanding as we embark on a quick repositioning of things for the benefit of all,” Dalung said.