By Uzor Odigbo
Sports philanthropist Alhaji Ahmed Isa Kaita has predicted that Team Nigeria’s athletics contingent will be successful in three events at the forthcoming Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
The Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) board member insisted that the chances of Nigeria winning three medals in Tokyo is bright.
“I’m not going to be drawn into naming the events our medals will come from. Once our athletes feature in the final eight of any event in Tokyo, anything can happen”
While extolling the prowess of home based athletes in their efforts to meet the Olympic qualifying stardards, Kaita noted that with the right preparation, Team Nigeria’s athletes have ability to raise the bar at the world stage.
“We are glad the AFN had started on a brilliant note in organising competitions for the homebased athletes. There would be more competitions ahead. After the Ado Ekiti, the National Sports festival rolls in, shortly after that, there would be the Abuja National Relay Champions in April which I will sponsor. With these competitions, our athletes would be more than ready to make greater impact at the Olympic Games, I didn’t include the camping outside the country and a few international competitions our athletes will participate in preparations before the Olympics”
The Katsina royal prodigy has a track record of sponsoring and organizing athletics competitions in his home state. He had also used sports as an empowerment tool to impact on youths with sporting talents in the State through the Award of Scholarships and financial empowerment for high performance after competitions.
“I live among these talented youths and there’s no way I can leave them way they are and since sports have a way of taking talented youths off the street, I decided to organise sports activities within and outside the state of Katsina and today, most of the youths are happy to have made something meaningful through their talents.
And about 30 of them are on scholarships in various institutions in Nigeria’
Those of us in the North have a special case in the fact that we have large resevoir of indigent youth population who are mostly idle. When America had this problem, they started contrusting basketball courts in schools and making sure that every youth was engaged in one sporting activity or the other. This is my idea for Youths in the North.
Hopefully, I have plans to take the idea to Northern zones in the future, we are starting under there AFN in April with the national relay Champions and we see how it goes.”
The marathon race is another event Kaita relishes and would want to be the first to organise it up North.
“We have plans to take marathon races to the North and organize it for Nigeria runners only with attractive price money. In the nearest future we shall announce the details, Kaita assured.
On his appointment as a replacement to former AFN President and board member Evenglist Solomon Ogba who resigned on his own accord, Kaita said he had to accept the offer in good fate having conseptualised the challenges and responsibilities the former occupant left behind.
“With what I was told and a little I’ve read about Ogba, he left a big shoe, but I’m here now to contribute my own quarter in moving AFN forward”
Kaita came from a royal background he never wanted to mension, rather insisted that his background had nothing to do with his passion for sports, as he leverages his joy and happiness in making sure that talented youths are happy and deploying their sporting talents rightly.
“I don’t need rewards, my happiness is that when these young ones win monitary prices after competitions, they are happy and their respective families share the joy the with them, it makes me happy too. On how he sees AFN and Nigeria’s sports industry in the nearest future, he said ” I’m optimistic that the sports sector will develope with the private sector coming into sport development forcefully. For AFN, our athletes would start winning laurels again in the international fora just like they did in the past.