Following a directive from President Muhammadu Buhari, the National Sports Commission (NSC) has been merged with the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development.
Minister of Youth and Sports, Solomon Dalung, who disclosed this in Abuja when he received an entourage from the Bureau of Public Enterprises led by the Acting Director-General, Dr. Vincent Akpotaire, said the creation of the commission had no legal backing.
Dalung identified sports as a determinant in foreign policy and tourism as well as veritable tool for national development, as such, Nigeria should have well developed programmes where sportsmen and women would be groomed for competitions devoid of personal interests by administrators.
He assured that under his supervision, every investment in sports by private investor would be guaranteed for probity and accountability. He therefore called on investors to invest in sports to eradicate social decadence among youths.
The Minister assured that the Ministry of Youth and Sports will partner with the Bureau of Public Enterprises to move the sports sector forward.
He called on private investors to take advantage of the proposed sports reforms to invest in the sector, adding that, not doing so would result in investing in criminality as the teeming idle Nigerian youth would have no vocation to turn to.
The Minister decried that sports development in the country had suffered setbacks which has affected the sector since the early 1980s.
The former Director-General of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Alhassan Yakmut, has been redeployed to the Ministry of Niger Delta as Director, Special Duties.
