Para-athletes urge greater govt's support to sports development

Enugu para-athletes have called on Governments in the South-East to pay greater attention to sports development in the zone.

A cross-section of the athletes made the call on Wednesday during an interactive session with newsmen in Enugu.

They appealed to the governors in the zone to provide the necessary modern sporting equipment and also upgrade the existing ones.

They said that the lack of modern sporting facilities and standard stadia was the reason the zone could not host major sports competitions.

Silver Ezeikpe, the Southeast Zonal Para-Athletics Representative at the Federal, identified the absence of standard stadia as one of the major challenges confronting them.

"We always have the problem of the lack of standard stadia whenever we attract competitions from the federation.

"Even when we represented the state with impressive performances, government does not appreciate our efforts by offering us employment," he said.

According to Ezeikpe, the zone loses its quality atheletes because of government negligect.

"Our athletes are not being taken care of or offered employment for representing our states well.

"As a representative of para-athletes at the federal, we do go extra mile to attract sporting events but government does not provide the necessary logistics," he said.

Also, a Paralympic Power Lifter, Lucy Ejike, called on the governments and South East Federal representatives to show more commitment toward sports development in the zone.

Ejike said that the zone recently elected capable and viable representatives for the seven athletics under the Paralympic Committee Nigeria.

He said that another "peculiar problem" in the zone had to do with the lack of facilities and funds to raise young athletes to takeover from the aging ones.