... Ambitions on paper, silence on the field

Aminu Bolanle Iqmat is a 300 level student from our beloved department. She is known to be passionate about sports and actively participates in sports. She also functions as the Sports Director. This makes her the Chairman of the Sports Committee putting her in charge of sports awareness, participation, games organisations (within and outside the department), etc. She came into this office with five major plans: Expanding Sporting Horizon, Making our department a sporting power house, Sport Awareness, Celebrating our own Sports stars, Strategic Partnership for Better Sports Facilities. We would look at how much she has completed these plans, hearing from both sides.

From the “horse's mouth”, only 3 out of 5 of these plans have been completed. In her aim to expand the department's sporting horizon, she planned to expose the public eye to the beauty of other sports like Handball, Volleyball, Athletics, making NSASAITES aware of the various sports in the University of Ibadan. As revealed by her, this was done by making NSASAITES aware and encouraged to join the platforms for these sports. She states, “Earlier last semester different sport teams groups were been sent to the group to create awareness about the different sports we have in University of Ibadan

I also created time to encourage them, that is every interested person to join the Various groups”. An hindrance to this could be that these messages were not read by NSASAITES on the Group, therefore having little or no impact.

In her plans to make our department a sporting power house, plans were made and effected for participation in inter-departmental competitions like the Dean's Cup. Although she mentioned that one hindrance to expanding this plan beyond the Dean's Cup is “Having People come out to participate when we call on them to come out. Most people are expecting us to do a lot of things but when we reach out to them they don't turn up and before we can say we want to move that objective to the next level, we need Nsasaites to get involved and come out to participate.”

To celebrate our own sports stars, “Having someone to make graphics for the Sport stars is something that has been an issue” , she says and this is why this objective wasn't carried out.

Now to hear from the people If her best efforts so far were good enough. While NSASAITES acknowledge her impact in our participation in the Dean's Cup as we are now in the finals, an NSASAITE says, “She’s working based on her abilities but I believe she ought to do more”. A 200 level student says, “I'm not aware of the recruitment process but when the department has a sporting competition, there is 100 percent awareness except people do not read the group messages”. A 100 level student states, “I don't even know if we have board games in the department”. Statements like, “Are there other sports apart from that that the department engages in, I'm only aware of football and board games”, highlights the fact that although there is publicity for competitions, there is no evidence for publicity to recruit people to participate in these games. This ultimately limits the sporting horizon from being expanded. More awareness and publicity is encouraged by the NSASAITES as this could lead to more awareness, more volunteers, discovery of sports talents, enabling a department to be a sports powerhouse, dominant in not just few but all sports if possible.

With a few weeks left to serve as Sports Director, Bolanle still has some things up her sleeve as she has a lot planned for NSASAITES. She says, “There is an event coming up from the office of the Sport Director this semester which will involve varieties of sports. And getting partners, sponsors and all will be achieved then”. This would momentarily tick the objective of expanding our horizon to different sports from her box. This would also achieve her last goal on her manifesto: Strategic Partnership for Better Sports Facilities.

We encourage all NSASAITES to be available for the upcoming event, so as to witness the Sports Director work in her full capacity.