The Minister of Youth and Sports Development, Sunday Dare, has announced that the Federal Government has approved the construction of a new National Sports Medicine and High-Performance Centre.
The federal government has also approved the sum of N2.4 billion for the proposed project which will be sited at the Moshood Abiola Stadium in Lagos.
While announcing this to reporters in Abuja on Wednesday, Sunday Dare confirmed that the construction of the center will be completed in 2026.
This project was approved during Wednesday’s Federal Executive Council meeting at the State House, Abuja, which reportedly lasted for almost eight hours. The country’s vice president Yemi Osinbajo presided over the meeting on behalf of President Muhammadu Buhari.
According to Sunday Dare, the proposed High-Performance Centre has an in-built maintenance structure to prevent the project from losing its efficiency like other government-owned facilities.
The minister said, “The Ministry of Youth and Sports Development presented just one memo. The memo has to do with the National Sports Medicine and High-Performance Center and the construction of a High-Performance Center at the Package B of the Moshood Abiola Stadium.
“Over time in the past decades, one of the drawbacks of sports development and athlete’s development has been the lack of a high-performance center. Global sports development practice has a High-Performance Center as a major component of conditioning its athletes, it takes your athletes beyond just raw talent to some level of sports science and precision.
“The lack of that scientific input into our sports development over time has not helped us to reach the maximum podium performance that can be attained by athletes.”
Dare added, “The ministry, two days ago (Monday), released the list of renovations that have taken place at the Moshood Abiola stadium. 24 renovations and upgrades have taken place at the stadium in Surulere. 16 upgrades have taken place over time. More than 11 functional areas.
“I must say for the record that we’ve been able to bring about a culture of maintenance for the High-Performance Centre. We’re building in two to four years of maintenance for Dangote that fix the main bowl. We built in two-year maintenance.
“Surulere, Premier Loto, two years maintenance with possible renewal, and I agree that without a maintenance culture, no matter how much we invest in our sporting facilities or any building infrastructure for that matter. They will go bad.”