Veteran Sportsman Calls For Civic Center Reconstruction

The president of the Life Youth Sports Development Initiative (LYSDI) in Nigeria,

Odikibo Solomon Odikibo has called on the Rivers State Governor, Sir Siminialayi Fubara, through the Ministry of Sports to reconstruct the Alfred Diete Spiff Sports Complex (Civic Center) with the view to providing track and field facilities.

He stated the state has abundant talents in track and field events but limited facilities to train with to improve themselves.

Odikibo, who won several medals in long jump and high jump for the state, made this call in an exclusive interview with Tidesports shortly after conducting a training session with young athletes under his tutelage, at the weekend in Port Harcourt.

According to him, with what is going on with track and field events in the state, the disciplines could soon go extinct, especially,as track and field athletes are currently growing old without adequate replacement in sight to replace themand it appears that relevant authorities do not care to discover and groom athletes.

” I am passionately appealing to the state government to reconstruct the Civic Center to accommodate track and field facilities as it was before.

“Young athletes are eager to do sports but have no facilities to train with. We all know that without training facilities, no athlete will improve, so there’s a need to bring the Civic Center back to her original state, Odikibo said.

He explained that the organization is a grassroots sports initiative designed to discover young athletes from secondary schools, and that it was established out of passion to discover hidden talents from secondary schools. “It is self-sponsored with the intention to catch them young.

“In my days of active sports, there were lots of secondary school sports competitions and tournaments; it was there they used to discover athletes. It was from school sports that I was also discovered. I did high jump, long jump, and hurdle” he stated.

Tonye Orabere