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UNILAG honours athletes, prepares for NUGA 2019

By Maria Diamond
26 January 2019   |   4:04 am
The Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos (UNILAG) Akoka, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe says the institution is working tirelessly to put in place all necessarily facilities...

UNILAG Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe

The Vice Chancellor of University of Lagos (UNILAG) Akoka, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe says the institution is working tirelessly to put in place all necessarily facilities for the forthcoming Nigeria Universities Games Association (NUGA) 2019 competition, which will be hosted by the school.

Speaking during a reception hosted at the institution’s Senate Chambers in honour of Team UNILAG, which came second at the recently concluded West Africa Universities Games (WAUG) at the University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT), Rivers State, Ogundipe said the ideology behind the reception was to recognise, appreciate and celebrate the athletes that represented the institution, as good ambassadors of the school because they did very well.

“Although they didn’t win the first place, they made the institution proud in so many ways, especially in their conduct. They were well behaved and came back with good remarks. They received an award for Best Behaved Team so I am proud of them.

“Concerning the facilities for the NUGA Games, very soon a lot of things would be put in place. Also, we do not just want to host the NUGA Games, but we also want to win first place.

“We are doing everything possible to ensure the NUGA Games would be the best. What UNIPORT did was to showcase the swimmers; we are going to showcase our own swimmers too and we’d play the games as it should be played without recruiting outsiders,” he said.

Also speaking at the reception, Chairman, UNILAG Sport Management Board, Prof Oyelowo Oyewo said: “Though UNILAG came second in the WAUG Games, we still have a lot to do in terms of certain sport varieties, like in swimming we have to step up. There are some other areas we have noted where we did not even present athletes, so the gap have to be closed in order for us to win the forthcoming NUGA Games because we are hosting to win.

“We have addressed some of these lapses… our swimming pool is under renovation. We need an Olympic size competitive swimming pool because there are many medals in swimming.

“With respect to other sports, we are renovating the Sports Centre. We hope to attract sponsors that would invest in NUGA in order to aid putting a number of other things in place.

“Also, we are trying to ensure we have a games village ready before the NUGA Games and we believe all these would be in place in time,” he said.

The athletes and their officials, who participated in the WAUG Games, were treated to an evening of glory and appreciation as each athlete went home with not just gold or bronze medals but other special packages by the institution.

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