A side view of the falling roof at the Chuba Ikpeazu Indoor Sports Hall.
Patrick Onyedum, Chairman of Anambra Sports Development Commission (ASDC), on Thursday expressed sadness at the level of decay at the two mini-stadiums in Onitsha due to several years of abandonment.
Onyedum, who visited the facilities in company of some Commission officials, said allowing them to disintegrate in spite of the huge sum of money spent on building them was unacceptable.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the facilities are the Chuba Ikpeazu mini-stadium and the Godwin Achebe mini-stadium.
The roofs of the pavilion and indoor sports hall at the Chuba Ikpeazu mini-stadium have been blown off.
Also, the tartan tracks have peeled off and the football pitch has been overgrown by weeds.
Equally, the Godwin Achebe mini-stadium has no grass on the football pitch and is now being used as a parking lot for tricycles, with refuse littering the facilities.
NAN reports that the facility which was built in 2009 and was used to stage both the State and Schools Sports Festivals till about eight years ago.
Onyedum said it was sad that the facilities were not being used to stage competitions.
“Their components such as athletics tracks, football pitches, pavilions and indoor sports halls have also been allowed to decay,” he said.
The ASDC Chairman said Onitsha is a town with a rich history of sports with thousands of budding athletes and deserved a functional sports facility where they could express themselves.
“I am not impressed with what I saw at these facilities. They have undergone serious decay due to lack of maintenance.
“Why should we build such infrastructure when we know we are not ready to maintain them, especially the Ikpeazu stadium which is a big stadium with a variety of facilities that can keep our primary and secondary school students busy in any game they want.
“The tartan tracks are rotten and not in use, and the building is dilapidated with a leaking roof. Nothing is functioning.
“There is a lot to do to revive that place,” he said.
Onyedum noted that, since having functional sports infrastructure was crucial to building a sustainable sports sector, he would do something about the situation.
“I will present the situation to Gov. Chukwuma Soludo for possible resuscitation.”
He said the state government would consider a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model for the rebuilding and management of sports facilities in the state for effectiveness.
“I will visit the facilities a second time to evaluate the situation and present it to the governor.
“We shall consider Public Private Partnership in rebuilding and maintaining sports facilities in Anambra.
“We will not allow our sports infrastructure to suffer that level of non-maintenance again,” the commission chairman said.(NAN)
