The Director-General of Nigeria’s National Sports Commission (NSC), Honourable Bukola Olopade has promised that the upcoming National Sports Festival in Ogun State will yield many new records, flaunt numerous innovations and release several bolts of excitement.
Sports247 gathered that, with the festival, tagged Gateway Games 2025, set to start next Friday and run till May 30th, Olopade is already personally getting very excited about the spectacle lurking round the corner and he wants all Nigerians to hop aboard the bandwagon.
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The NSC’s egg head, who is also a former commissioner for sports in Ogun State, added that the local organising committee’s ability to get all facilities in place well ahead of the opening ceremony is a record in itself.
Olopade added, “This is a world record.
Ogun State has crossed many hurdles in record time. What we need to be talking about now is how the enthusiasm is growing nationwide.”
The jocular sports administrator then singled out the novel presentation of Invited Junior Athletes (IJA), to be a competing ‘state’ during Gateway Games 2025, as a major talking point to look out for, with a view that the youngsters, who are currently at their camp in Abuja, will shock many of their senior counterparts during the festival.
He disclosed, “I am also excited to know that the Invited Junior Athletes, who are going to be the 38th contingent, for the first time in the history of Nigeria’s sports, are already camped in the MKO National Stadium in Abuja. They are there, enjoying themselves and getting prepared.
“News coming out of the camp has it that they are ready to defeat established athletes and become elite athletes themselves. So, we can expect surprises on the podium board.”
Olopade concluded by looking into the immediate and distant future after the festival in Ogun State, regarding the emergence of today’s IJA as tomorrow’s elite athletes, while also revealing that the NSC has started paying Nigeria’s top stars training grants ahead of the Commonwealth Games.
“Another strategic innovation of the competition is that we expect our preparations over the past seven months to bring some of these juniors onto the podium spot for them to also become elite athletes that can be looked after along the way.
“We’ve also already started paying elite athletes with money from the private sector, not from government. So, a lot of things are tied to these Games, and they are all relating to some of the policies that the commission has come up with.
“It all indicates that excitement is ahead of us, and I’m already getting excited, myself,” the man fondly called ‘DG’ retorted.
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