Anambra to spend N9m on grassroots sports development

CHAIRMAN, Anambra State Sports Development Commission Tony Oli says the state government plans to spend about nine hundred million naira on the development of community sports facilities to enhance sporting events at the grass roots.

  Oli disclosed the initiative to newsmen at the state assembly complex Awka yesterday shortly after the budget defence of the commission.

  He said there were two major capital projects in the commission’s 2020 budget stressing that first and foremost, the sports commission would embark on the development of community-based sports arenas across the 187 communites in Anambra State.

  Mr. Oli explained that the sports arenas would be school-based in order to encourage sporting activities in schools across the state. He stated that the second major project in the commission’s budget was the Awka Township Stadium which he said would be renamed Anambra Township Stadium after being remodeled into a state-of-the-art stadium to host major sporting events in the state.

   He said the commission’s 2020 budget content showed that for the first time, Anambra state would have grassroots sports facilities to harness raw talents from the hinterlands.

  The Anambra sports commission chairman said no community would be left out in the development of the playgrounds stressing that the commission would go to the communities to determine the school where the sports arena would be sited adding that riverine communities would equally benefit from the project .

  He concluded by saying the nine hundred million naira budgeted for the development of community-based sports facilities across the one eighty-seven communities expected to partake in the largesse while assuring the citizenry of a quantum leap in infrastructural development in the sports sector.