By OKEY NDIRIBE, Abuja
The Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) has requested for the provision of N315 million naira to execute its programmes for 2012.

President of the AFN, Chief Solomon Ogba who made the request yesterday in Abuja while unveiling the 2012 Programme of Events of the federation said a number of decisions have been reached by the board of the AFN to ensure that Nigerian athletes were adequately catered for like their counterparts from other parts of the world.

According to him, from January, 2011 it will be mandatory for every athlete practicing in Nigeria to be registered with a club to avoid the unnecessary cross carpeting by athletes with the attendant squabbles between either states or clubs who always lay claims to the same athlete at the same time. He said transfer fees are now to be paid on athletes moving from one club to another to enhance the profile of the athletes.

The former Commissioner for Sports in Deltas State regretted the dwindling fortune of sports in Nigeria over the years even as he argued that the country has all what it takes to be one of the power houses in athletics including the distance races which have been dominated by such countries like Kenya and Ethiopia.

Other contents of the programme as unveiled by the AFN includes the IAAF Level iii Coaching Course which will take place in February, 2012 in Warri Delta State. Ogba said the issue of training of coaches has become problematic because a lot of Nigerian coaches have not been able to upgrade themselves.

“Already you must agree with me that we have started the training programme with the Level 1 Course where 25 persons took part in Abuja about two weeks ago. Also all the instructions will be from the IAAF who will be equally inspecting our high capacity training grounds” stated Ogba who added that the IAAF has already put in place modalities to select the participants that will take place in the coaching course.

Another land mark report of the programme is the time table for the AFN Golden League which will take place in Port Harcourt in March. Ogba said the Golden League will attract some monetary reward which will see the winner smile to the bank with the sum of $10,000 dollars.

On the efforts of the AFN to return the past glory of Nigeria in athletics, Ogba revealed that former international, Innocent Egbunike has been selected as the Chief Coach of the AFN wand will be assisted by 12 other ex-internationals who will be operating from the zones ostensibly to fish out young talents who could be nurtured to stardom.