Honourable Minister of Youths And Sports, Mr Sunday Dare has expressed his dismay over the current trend of age cheat at the National Youth Games which is meant for Athletes under the age of 15.
The Minister, in his remark at the closing ceremony of the 6th edition of National Youth Games which held at the University of Ilorin condemned the soaring issues around age cheat in the games and highlighted some of the measure that would be put in place to ensure adequate screening is carried out to admit athletes for the Youth Games.
He said “I want to condemned and express my disappointment about a few of the problem around age cheating that continues to roar it’s head specifically even during this games”.
“The Ministry for Youths And Sports Development wants to declare that going forward we will ensure that we will adopt more scientific means of identifying age cheat next time and melt out stiff penalties to the offending athletes and the state they represent”.
He further stressed “We will consider the National Identity Management Card (NIMC) registration as a requirement and others that will be roll out later in our letters that will go to out to the states and there will be need for all Athletes to have a NIMC registration before they can participate henceforth”.
“This document would be required, would be developed and we will work in conjunction with the Organisation in charge, this measure is needed to avoid losing out on a possible potential medalist being screened out as over aged while they are not or vise versa”. quipped the Minister.
The Minister believes that the move will help in identifying screening of atheletes in order not to deny qualified athletes a future in their chosen sport.