After returning from one of its best outings in the history of the National Sports Festival, the Management of the Nasarawa State Ministry of  Youth and Sports Development, Tuesday, 20th April, 2021, held a post-mortem with coaches of the various Sporting Associations who participated at the Festival to assess Team Nasarawa’s performance, challenges faced and sample opinions on how to improve on the results in future events.

Chaired by the Commissioner for the Ministry, Hon. Othman Bala Adam, who showered encomiums on the feat attained by Team Nasarawa at the two-week long event, coaches also voiced out the secret to their successes even as they revealed areas of urgent attention, especially in infrastructural development, procurement of modern, globally acceptable equipment, and early preparations, to better their performances in subsequent outings.

The meeting which lasted for one hour and forty-nine minutes, had the Commissioner announcing new reward packages for coaches who propelled their athletes to win medals.

According to the Commissioner, “Coaches who led their athletes to win Gold medal are now promoted to the rank of Technical Advisers, with an improved daily Duty Travel Allowance package for championships per coach risen to fifteen thousand naira(N15,000.00), from the initial twelve thousand naira(N12,000.00), and a guaranteed monthly stipend per coach at five thousand naira(N5,000.00).

“Silver medalist coaches shall be entitled to  three thousand naira(N3,000.00) as guaranteed monthly stipend.

“Whereas Bronze medalist coaches will get two thousand naira(N2,000.00) as guaranteed monthly stipend.

“These stipends, aside your monthly emoluments, are gotten from the Ministry’s monthly Overhead Cost and it’s our internal way, as a Management, of motivating you before the Government comes up with its own reward system”, Othman Bala said

He called on the coaches to sustain the tempo on the successes recorded in Edo, assuring that more efforts would be put in place by the Government to attend to the various observations and suggestions made during the interface, stressing that the Government of Governor Engr. Abdullahi Sule was poised to making Nasarawa State the epicentre of sports development in Nigeria.

With the National Youth Games set for Ilorin, Kwara State in September, this year, and 21st edition of the National Sports Festival billed to hold in Asaba, Delta State, in 2022, there is no better time for the Ministry to convey such post-mortem than now.

Record has it that Team Nasarawa won 22 medals, comprising five Gold, four Silver and thirteen Bronze medals, at the recently concluded Edo 2020 National Sports Festival, the highest medal haul in the history of the State in the Sports Festival.