LACK OF SPORTING FACILITIES IN PRIVATE SCHOOLS AS THE BANE OF NATIONAL SPORTS DEVELOPMENT

BY:MIKE EKUNNO

As the year 2011 runs to an end, we need to spare a thought as to how well we have fared in various aspects of our national life. In the field of sports, the nation witnessed a decline in virtually all aspects of sports. In football, we painfully witnessed the ouster of Nigerian club sides from all the continental tournaments they entered. Our national football teams all failed to qualify for major international tournaments while the female national team did poorly at the World Cup. In athletics, we managed to maintain the third position on the medals table of the All African Games, a position which is fast becoming our national lot.
Sports attracts emotive analysis and comments and there is no shortage of people who can proffer the reasons for our dwindling performances. However, there is a general agreement on the connection between school sports and national sports. Schools act as the nurseries that rear national and international sportsmen and women. This is because the budding period of most sports people is at their youth, most of which is spent in schools. Again, the critical mass of students assembled under a school environment affords the opportunity for competition in sports. Schools are also positioned to promote excellence in sports because the mental discipline required for studies also benefits the physical discipline required for sports. Little wonder, ancient Olympians believed that a sound mind only comes from a sound body. The fortunes of school sports and national sports are therefore directly related. In our country, however, one of the major causes of decline in school sports has been the advent of private schools. The last two decades have witnessed a geometrical increase in the number of private schools at primary and secondary levels. This is a positive development that should be commended and encouraged.
However, one inadvertent offshoot of this development is the lack of emphasis on sports in most of the private schools. Sometimes this is not the making of these schools. They find themselves in constricting school premises without enough space for playgrounds and pitches. This is a systemic problem. From the beginning of Nigerian education, private schools were not part of the ownership mix. There were pioneering efforts by religious bodies and voluntary agencies but these had the status of public schools since they worked hand in hand with the colonial administration. They were therefore officially allotted spacious premises or had host communities who donated generous spaces. When the private schools as we know them today became part of the equation, their proprietors had to purchase land for the schools often at exorbitant costs. Again the exigencies of citing schools at convenient distances from residential neighbourhoods meant that many proprietors had to accept to squeeze their schools inside small lots in built-up neighbourhoods. This is what has led to the absence of playgrounds and pitches in private schools.

For this problem to be corrected, modern day city planners should begin to make generous provisions for private educational institutions in preparing the land use budget in city cadastral maps. The present reality shows that private primary schools outnumber the public ones in most cities. City planners therefore need to wake up to this fact in their land use planning. Governments can afford to allocate land for private schools directly to proprietors. If this is done, proprietors can channel their capital funds to infrastructural development instead of investing in exorbitant land acquisition. More importantly, they will be able to have school premises that are large enough to accommodate playgrounds and pitches. With sports pitches in private schools, the revival of school sports can commence which will by extension positively impact national sports.

Source : FRCN daily Commentary