The Ministry of Youth and Sports Development yesterday received a 172 page 2020 National Sports Industry Policy draft from the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG).
In a virtual meeting held on Tuesday which was attended by the members of the NESG and ministry officials, the draft policy was submitted following a concerted effort by relevant stakeholders to change the face of running sports business in the country.
According to the minister, Sunday Dare during his keynote address, “The sports policy is a new dawn that will drive the process of moving sports away from being recreational to business.”
He stated that the policy will be available to sports loving Nigerians on the ministry’s website to access and comment on.
“With the presentation of the draft document of the National Sport policy to the ministry, the immediate logical step is to present it to the public and that is why it is going to be on our website in the next ten days.
“There is google arrangement where you can comment and all these comments will be collated and we will go to another committee that will review it side by side.
“Thereafter it comes back to the ministry and an implementation committee will look at it and then submit it to the office of the Attorney General of the Federation because of the legal components. When it comes back from the AGF, whatever correction, addition, subtraction will be made by the ministry. From there we will take it to the council,” he said.
Speaking further, Dare said that the projection of the ministry to have draft approved by the Federal Executive Council will be within the next three months.
“Our desire is that between September and October, we should be able to deliver it. But sometimes there are part of this process you can’t really hurry,” he said.
In the same vein, the head of the Sports Industry Thematic Group, Nkechi Obi hailed the independence given to the group to come up with the draft policy.
“There was no form of interference from the ministry to direct the NESG on what the policy should be all about,” she said.
