By Isaac Afolabi
A former under-16 Squash national player, Niyi Oyewunmi, has urged the federal government, state and local governments to also extend support to squash and other sporting activities like they do in football.
Mr Oyewunmi made this appeal in a telephone interview with our correspondent to kick-start the South-West Open Squash Championship starting on Thursday and end on Saturday.
Mr Oyewunmi who is the coordinator of the tournament, appealed to the federal government under the leadership of President Muhamadu Buhari, state and local governments to extend their attention to other areas of sports so as to encourage those who are interested in the games.
He specifically appealed to Oyo State government under the leadership of Engineer Seyi Makinde to divert its attention to other areas of sports in order to encourage people who are interested in other areas of sports apart from football.
Furthermore Mr Oyewunmi said so far ninety players have registered for the national competition which is targeting boys and girls of nineteen and sisteeen years old.
According to him, “My appeal to Oyo State government is that they should develop other areas of sports. The attention is too much on football.
“In Nigeria, government at the federal, state and local governments are focusing much more on football, if government can earnmark just 20 percent of what the expend on football to squash or other sports, those sporting activities would have been better developed by now.
“I want to use the opportunity to call federal government and State governments to extend the attention to other areas of sports like Squash. It will help us to develop other areas of sports.
Sponsor of the tournament, Dr. Emmanuel Dele-Oladejo in his address, noted that the motive behind the tournament is to serve as a clarion call to develop productive youths.
He added that he decided to sponsor the tournament in a bid to add value to other areas of sports.
“This Squash Championship is meant to serve as a clarion call to all that is concerned to develop productive youth engagement strategies needed to contain and channel their inherent exuberance towards adding positive value to our society.
“This concept is predicated on the mental and physical smartness required to succeed in the game of Squash.