Chairman of Lagos State Sports Commission Dr Kweku Tandoh says the Commission’s focus in 2019 will continue to be on grassroots and school sports development, which he believes hold the “key to the future of sports in Nigeria”.

The State Sports Commission was established to, among other things, develop strategic plans for sports development in addition to ensuring grassroots sports development in the state and Dr Tandoh told busybuddiesng.com that with the recent inauguration of the boards of various sports associations in the state, many programmes geared at promoting grassroots sports development will come on stream this year.

“We will continue to work on our programs,” Dr Tandoh said about the Commission’s plans for 2019.

“Our focus as usual will remain on grassroots sports development [and] school sports development because we believe that that is the key to the future of sports in Nigeria. And now that our sports association boards have been inaugurated, we believe and we are quite optimistic that there will be a lot more activities at the grassroots levels many of the boards already have very interesting programmes for 2019 and I am sure that they will deliver because we trust and believe in the people that we have put in there.”

In order to ensure sustained funding for sports development in the State, the Lagos State government in February 2018, inaugurated the Sports Trust Fund (STF) whose mandate – backed by an enabling parliamentary act – is to “interface with the private and public sectors to raise funds for sports development “.

Nearly one year down the line, Dr Tandoh who is a member of STF governing board says the Fund is now “on course” towards fulfilling its purpose.

“We are on course in terms of setting it up as a proper organ to interface with the private sector to bring in funding for sports,” he told busybuddiesng.com.

“The idea is to move funding of sports away from government and get more private funding for sports because that is the way it is done all over the world and the framework has been setup. It has been set up by law, the management has been set up they have their own office space now and gradually I’m sure, that it would become institutionalised and that would be the main organ that would be working with the private sector in raising funds for sports development.”