The Minister of Youths and Sports, Sunday Dare, has stated that Nigeria will maximise the 2022 Commonwealth Games to establish its prominence in global sports politics and diplomacy.
The Minister, in an exclusive interview with Channels Television, said the multi-sports competition in Birmingham, UK, provides a huge opportunity for Nigerian athlete to surpass the record of the 2018 edition, which held in Gold Coast, Australia.
“If you talk about football, Nigeria is well-respected,” he said. “In athletics, Nigeria is also well-respected. But we want to get the momentum back. We want to get to the top of the pack in track and field events.
“We’ve been to the Commonwealth before. We want to see out how we can best our record, better than what we did in 2018.
“We’ve also been very careful – we are competing in just nine sports this time, because we did some evaluations, some computations, some benchmarking and we said let’s put our best foot forward. That’s what most countries are doing.”