During the tenure of Barrister Solomon Dalung as the Minister of Youth and Sports, he had every cause to bewail the scrapping of sports and physical education in the nation’s school curriculum. At one forum in Abuja, Dalung noted that institutional sports which included school sports were the foundation of the glorious years in Nigeria, wondering how the country got to a point that physical education was eliminated in our schools. He had said: “There ought to be a synergy between the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Education for compulsory introduction of school sports and physical education because that is the foundation of sports development and we cannot do without it.
” Encouraging as the minister’s assurances were at the time, no one was enthusiastic about any renewed zeal to bring back sports to our schools across the country. We have heard about such collaboration between the Ministry of Youth and Sports and its Education counterpart in the past. Where it is encouraged, the organisers do so perfunctorily.
Prior to the creation of the sports ministry, the ministries of education at the regional level were saddled with the responsibility of running sports both in the primary and secondary schools. The colonial masters bequeathed to us schools that were complete with sports facilities and no such institutions were complete without physical and health education teachers who served as games masters. Inter-house and inter-school competitions featured .
