{"id":24551,"date":"2011-12-30T23:36:32","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T23:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/12\/2011-sports-did-well-but-football-failed-nigeria-alhaji-halilu\/"},"modified":"2011-12-30T23:36:32","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T23:36:32","slug":"2011-sports-did-well-but-football-failed-nigeria-alhaji-halilu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/12\/30\/2011-sports-did-well-but-football-failed-nigeria-alhaji-halilu\/","title":{"rendered":"2011: Sports did well but football failed Nigeria \u2013 Alhaji Halilu"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"95\">\n<p>By Ime Bassey<\/p>\n<p>Sports, they say \u2018is the opium of the people\u2019 but Alhaji Mohammed Halilu, 1st Vice President, Nigerian Weightlifting Federation, NWF believes that it has not given Nigerians the desired joy this year.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking with Saturday Vanguard Sports from his base in Abuja, the former Council of Sports member said, it was football that failed the country but other sports did the country well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe say we are the giant of Africa and we center all our attention in only one sport \u2013 football which is not supposed to be. We did not do well in 2011 in terms of our most loved sport \u2013 football.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat pains me most is our fire brigade approach to the game itself. We are competition driven instead of developmental focused, this puts us at the edge of always wanting to win all the time after spending huge amount of money to bring our \u2018so-called\u2019 stars from Europe who have less time to acclimatize to the African weather which they have left for a while,\u201d<\/p>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-188790\" title=\"f-eagles2\" src=\"http:\/\/vml1.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/f-eagles2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"412\" height=\"250\" \/><\/p>\n<p>IT&#8217;S FINISHED<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Alhaji Halilu started<\/p>\n<p>He continued: \u201cNow, because of the high attention given to football, everybody wants to be a football administrator, making it a do or die affair. The polity is heated so much that the structures suffer and nothing is achieved.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLook at us, giant of Africa, the Nations Cup will be on in a few days from now and we will not be there, yet we say, \u2018we are giant of Africa\u2019, what a shame! This should be an eye opener to the National Sports Commission, NSC that it is time they start giving other sports the needed attention they deserve, else sports will go down the drain,\u201d Alhaji Halilu said.<\/p>\n<p>The former Nasarawa State Commissioner of Sports appealed to the NSC to give attention to other sports and also that sports should be made mandatory at all levels of schools curriculum in other for development to start early and success feasible.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to appeal to the National Sports Commission that, in a situation where other sports whose activities spread across the nation, can give us international recognition, they should give high attention to them so there will be some relief on our faces as touching sports performance instead football alone.<\/p>\n<p>I have suggested that sports should be made mandatory in all strata of schools\u2019 calendar in the country because it is not only competition that matters but the exercise and fun in sports.<\/p>\n<p>Engaging children from the young age of six year and above will put them in a right frame of mind ahead of the future most especially, their brains will be sharpened. This will eventually enable youths to take sports professionally,\u201d Alhaji Halilu added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Comments are moderated. Please keep them clean and brief.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>More here:<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.vanguardngr.com\/2011\/12\/2011-sports-did-well-but-football-failed-nigeria-%E2%80%93-alhaji-halilu\/\" title=\"2011: Sports did well but football failed Nigeria \u2013 Alhaji Halilu\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2011: Sports did well but football failed Nigeria \u2013 Alhaji Halilu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> By Ime Bassey Sports, they say \u2018is the opium of the people\u2019 but Alhaji Mohammed Halilu, 1st Vice President, Nigerian Weightlifting Federation, NWF believes that it has not given Nigerians the desired joy this year. Speaking with Saturday Vanguard Sports from his base in Abuja, the former Council of Sports member said, it was football that failed the country but other sports did the country well. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>2011: Sports did well but football failed Nigeria \u2013 Alhaji Halilu - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/12\/30\/2011-sports-did-well-but-football-failed-nigeria-alhaji-halilu\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"2011: Sports did well but football failed Nigeria \u2013 Alhaji Halilu - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"By Ime Bassey Sports, they say \u2018is the opium of the people\u2019 but Alhaji Mohammed Halilu, 1st Vice President, Nigerian Weightlifting Federation, NWF believes that it has not given Nigerians the desired joy this year. 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