NSC Partners David Umahi Varsity on Advancement of Sports Medicine, Research

By Amaechi Agbo

The National Sports Commission has engaged with David Umahi Federal University of Health, Ebonyi State to advance Sports Medicine and research as well as addressing the deficit in the supply of sports administration competences and expertise.
This was the outcome of a strategic meeting between the NSC Chairman Mallam Shehu Dikko and the Vice-Chancelor of the University Prof. Sam Ibeneme.
The NSC helmsman said, “At some point, as we move forward, we expect to have a proper developmental collaboration that will even veer into the antidoping programmes of the Commission. You know that the President has signed the Antidoping bill into law and also the Antidoping Agency has been set up. We have to train more hands in that aspect as well, so we have to see how we can work with the University to that effect.”
He spoke to the huge deficit in the supply of required core competencies in the sporting sector which could impact on the future of the industry if not addressed.
“We have a huge deficit in Sports Medicine. The last time we took the statistics, in the whole country, we don’t have up to fifty that are properly trained in Sports Medicine. We have a huge deficit in the Sports educational sector generally. By the time we took data, we had only 16,000 students in the whole country offering one sports course or the other across all levels that has to do with sports. We are working to evolve policies and legislations that will help address these deficits”, he said.
He continued, “There is also the issue of ensuring that we have properly qualified experts in sports administration and the need to regularly update their knowledge. Knowledge is power because you cannot give what you don’t have. If we had been having problems with sports development all these years, you can’t divulge that from the pausity of well qualified administrators and competencies. Hopefully if we had a properly structured collaboration, it should fix this deficiency.”
Earlier, Prof. Ibeneme observed that the colloboration should be a game-changer in the sporting sector.
“We have a lot of collaboration with Ministries of Health, Power and Education, as well as the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC) and felt it will be out of place if we don’t engage with the NSC because of the level of work we are doing in sports medicine and other sports competencies. At present even our students are here in the Commission for part of their attachment with two of our staff”, he said.
He continued, “We can offer so much in the area of research, training, building inter-sectorial collaborations, curriculum development and looking at new trends that the Commission is driving at and seeing how we can bring them into the training of our students.
“We will also help in training sports administrators and doctors specialising in Sports Medicine. We have already started doing some of these things but there is a need for a solid collaboration with the Commission to further concretise what we are doing. We believe that this partnership, if it is well structured, both the university and the Commission will benefit.”
Both parties plan to hold further technical meetings with the objective of coming up with a Memorandum of Understanding to provide a structured framework for sustained mutual engagement.