Los Angeles Olympics preparation captured in 2025 budget, says Dikko

To avoid a repeat of the past failures at the Olympic Games, the Federal Government has started moves to ensure that Nigerian athletes are better prepared to vie for laurels at the Los Angeles 2028 edition of the Games, chairman of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Mallam Shehu Dikko, has said.

As was the case at the London 2012 Olympic Games, Nigeria came back from Paris 2024 without a single medal; a situation that has given pushed the NSC to think of a new way of preparing for future competitions.

Speaking in Lagos on Thursday, Dikko said that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has thrown his weight behind the country’s early preparation towards Los Angeles 2028, adding that the commission has adopted a new pattern of preparing for the Olympics and other major international competitions.

According to Dikko, the NSC has already secured a ‘deliberate budget line in the 2025 budget for the Olympics 2028 preparations’.

“Every year we will make sure that there is funding in our budget lines for the Olympics preparation and other major competitions. There is also a budget line for the Commonwealth Games 2026 preparation.

“So in addition to whatever we will do with the private sector, every year there should be funding in the budget to support preparations for these key events. We are going to arrest this trend of late preparations for the Olympics.

“We thank President Tinubu for backing us in this plan, which clearly aligns with the renewed hope agenda and shared prosperity vision of the President, and indeed, will be a foundation for activating our domestic sports echo system.”

Dikko said that plans at an advanced stage to start paying grants to the country’s elite athletes. The grant and how much each athlete gets, he said, would be determined by the NSC board.

“The funding is there in the budget. The money for preparations for the Olympics, Commonwealth Games and other competitions are already in the budget as government’s first step. The next step is to bring in the private sector to complement what government is doing. The government gesture has made it easy for the private sector to key into our programme because there are specific incentives for sponsors of sports in Nigeria.”

On the poor state of sports facilities across the country, Dikko acknowledged that the country cannot develop sports without facilities, adding that rehabilitation of the facilities across the country will soon start.

He said: “The restoration of the Abuja Stadium is in the budget line. There are also plans to fix other stadiums across the country. We will also work with the state governors to see how we can get their facilities working. There is a proposal for mini-stadia all over the country. We will find existing playgrounds, schools’ sports centres and other community centres to intervene and get them working. We are also working with the private sector to establish facilities to help in grassroots sports development.

“The Federal Government will soon announce the composition of a National Stadium Reconstruction, Development and Management board, which will be responsible for signing off any sports facility being built to ensure they meet the required standard,” he stated.