Former Commissioner for Information, Youth, Culture and Sports in Kwara State, Hammed Adio believes the sustainability in sports development could only be achieved through purposeful leadership.
Speaking on a Radio programme, “The Big Guest’ on Diamond FM in Ilorin on Wednesday, the ace sports commentator revealed how his ‘tenacity of purpose’ principle served as his adrenaline through his journey to stardom.
Retired as a General Manager from NTA, Alhaji Adio relived the experience of his upbringing and emphasized on how combining sports and education helped strengthen his resolve and fed his pursuit for excellence.
Born in Jebba, Moro Local Government Area of Kwara State, revealed how is foray into sports was inspired by his decision to manuever a punishment scheduled for one of his troublesome offence during his primary school days.
“I committed an offense with a friend and we were moved out on the assembly ground for punishment. So I ran away and all students were asked to follow me but all of them couldn’t catch me.
With his Secondary education at the notable Offa Grammar School, he refrenced how he was encouraged by his teachers and how his blistering career at the early stage of life attracted him a “Fastest School Boy Runner” award in 1970; an acknowledgement of his exemplary performance in a state sponsored event.
Reminiscing his Olympics experience, he was part of the Nigerian team that was prevailed from participating in the 1974 Olympics event in Montreal, due to some international political circumstances, subsequently led the Nigerian team to the 1980 event and ultimately later on in the 1984 as a sports correspondent of the NTA.
He expressed the need to engender the theory of ’round peg in round hole’ in order to build a productive and responsive sports industry while placing preference on cognate experience in it’s leadership.
“The governing body of each sports federation needs to do more in popularising their sports” said Adio while poferring panacea to the overwhelming status of some sporting event over another.
For a career spanning through decades, the graduate of mass communication from the University of Lagos admonished sports writers on the significance of objectivity advising them to break the chain of “self-censorhip” as factor of their delivery.
“Opinions are self made, truth are sacred.I want to encourage my colleagues to be truthful and factual and to always do the right thing”.