Chairman of the National Sports Commission, Malam Shehu Dikko, has reemphasised the importance of having men and women of high integrity in the Nigerian sports industry.
He stated this when he attended the Integrity Symposium of the Integrity Group, with the theme, The Importance of Integrity in Sports.
The chairman revealed that an Independent Compliance Desk is being put together in the Commission to further expand the scope of the Country’s Integrity Compliance.
He said the compliance desk will also help various sports during the federation elections. “I personally believe in the agenda of Integrity being pushed in this gathering and I am where I am today because by God’s grace, I have been through different levels of integrity checks.
“I believe so much in that word integrity in our sports and some of us have come this far because we practice that word.
“We have to be deliberate about the issue of Integrity in our Sports and those coming into our various Federations must understand this and not see what we are doing, as a witch-hunt. It caused FIFA a lot of dollars to perform integrity checks and we must have such a mechanism in our sports here in Nigeria,” Dikko said.
The NSC boss however charged the sporting media to also be more responsive with their reportage of the country’s sports, saying unnecessary negative reportage has a way of demarketing the system and portraying the sports in bad light.
He assured the organisers of the commission’s support to expand the symposium, where the presidents of the various sporting federations and more stakeholders will be part of it.
The highlight of the event was the presentation of an Integrity plaque to the NSC Chairman by the Organisers for all his outstanding achievements in Nigerian Sports, having passed different levels of Integrity test both locally and Internationally by both CAF and FIFA.
