The Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung, said on Wednesday the Super Eagles 0-2 loss to Serbia in a pre-World Cup friendly played on Tuesday in London would not affect the team performance when the tournaments gets underway in Russia in June.
The minister said: “I’m quite confident of the Super Eagles. We mustn’t win every match before we can say we are prepared.”
The defeat, he said, would only put the team on their toes ensuring a good outing in Russia.
Dalung added: “The major highlights of the Ministry of Sports’ achievements are the democratisation of the national federation by the ministry as a policy trust. It has gone a long way in improving performances in sports. It has also rebuilt the confidence of our athletes which is giving the ministry the desirable results we are having.
“Before 2017, the situation in the national federations where the minister had the power to appoint 150 board members and these were seen as political appointments which were counter- productive to the progress and development of sports and we have overcome that.
“We also analysed national federations and their performances one after the other and of course it has been harvest of medals since the reforms in the national federations.
“Then we looked at the issue of youth development where the ministry has reviewed the national youth policy which was reviewed last in 2009. We presented this to Council for approval and we looked at youths empowerment programmes of the ministry which trained 400 young people in 2015 and 500 have been trained in 2018 in agro allied services including physical and leadership training. The beneficiaries are usually given take off grants which enable them to establish themselves.
“We also brought to the Council the progress recorded in National Youth Parliament training program where 109 young people are selected from the 109 senatorial districts in the country and are constituted into a parliament to discuss the issue of young people.
“Before coming onboard, the programme has been abandoned for a very long time and we resuscitated it. We also informed Council about the last national Council of Sports meeting which we withdrew the hosting right from Calabar which has been with the right since 2012 and has been unable to host the festival. The festival now will take place in November this year in Abuja and the Federal Government is hosting.”