Eagles ready for World Cup despite loss to Serbia –  Dalung

The Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung on Wednesday said that the Super Eagles loss to Serbia does not mean that the Nigeria team was not prepared to excel at the coming World Cup.

Super Eagles had on Tuesday lost 2 – 0 to Serbia in a friendly encounter in preparation for 2018 World Cup slated for Russia.

He said “I’m quite confident of the Super Eagles. We mustn’t win every match before we can say we are prepared.”

The defeat, he said, will only put the team on their toes towards achieving good outing in Russia.

On the progress report given to FEC, he said “The major highlights of the achievements of the Ministry of Sports are the democratisation of the national federation by the ministry as a policy trust. I have gone a long way by improving performances in sports. It has also rebuild the confidence of our athletes which is giving the Ministry the desirable results we are having.

“Before 2017, the situation in the national federations where the Minister had the power to apoint 150 board members and these were seen as political appointments which were counterproductive to the progress and development of sports and we have overcome that.

“We also analyzed national federations and their performances one after the other and of course it has been harvest of medals since the reforms in the national federations.

“Then we looked at the issue of youth development where the ministry has reviewed the national youth policy which was reviewed last since 2009 and we presented to council for approval and we looked at youths empowerment programmes of the Ministry which trained 400 young people in 2015 and 500 have been trained in 2018 in agro allied services including physical and leadership training. The beneficiaries are usually given take off grants which enable them to establish themselves.

“We also brought to council the progress recorded in National Youth Parliament youth training program where 109 young people are selected from the 109 senatorial districts in the country and are constituted into a parliament to discuss the issue of young people.

“Before coming onboard, the programme has been abandoned for a very long time and we resuscitated it. We also informed council about the last national council of sports meeting which we withdrew the hosting right from Calabar which has been with the right since 2012 and has been unable to host the festival. The festival now will take place in November this year in Abuja and the Federal Government is hosting.

“We also tried to draw the attention of the Council on the need for an effective synergy between the MDAs to be able to address the youth question which is more or less growing like a tsunami and if due attention is not given to it, we will likely have problems.” he said