•Ntiense Williams and Bukola Olopade
A passionate appeal has been sent to the Director-General of the National Sports Commission (NSC), Bukola Olopade, to save Rugby, a popular sport in the country, from extermination.
The appeal was made by Obong Ntiense Williams, a former Technical Director of the Rugby Federation, in a letter addressed to NSC titled, “A PASSIONATE APPEAL FOR RUGBY TO BE RETURNED TO THE NATIONAL SPORTS FESTIVAL AS ONE OF THE OLYMPICS PERMANENT SPORTS”.
•Rugby sport in Nigeria
Williams, fondly called “Mr Rugby” by friends and colleagues, in the letter sighted by The Frontier today, traced the history of the sport from 1998 when it was first introduced in Nigeria and the subsequent glory it brought to the country when it returned to the Olympics in Rio 2016 as a Scoring Event.
“Now that Rugby is an Olympics Sports, it is expedient to add it as one of the team sports like Hockey, Volleyball, Basketball, Handball, and Football,” Williams said.
“It will interest you to note that Nigerians are well suited to play this beautiful game and achieve stardom as many prominent Nigerians are plying their trade in high profile professional Rugby outfits around the world.
“Presently, a Nigerian is the Captain of the England national team, being the second. The first actually won the first Rugby 7’s Rugby World Cup in 1993 alongside 4 other Nigerians in the team,” he added.
•Rugby sport in Nigeria
Making a cogent request to the Commission to return Rugby to the mainstream of sports competition in the country, Williams stated: “It is therefore for these main reasons and much more that we are passionately appealing for you to once again use your good offices to help us return to the next edition of the National Sports Festival in Enugu on a permanent basis as an Olympic Sports like Volleyball, Basketball, Handball, Hockey, and Football are presently listed.
”As a matter of fact, it is only when a sport is scoring at the Enugu National Sports Festival that any state in the country will be interested to get involved in it, and that in turn will help us propagate its gospel adequately around the country.”
