Sports as a veritable tool for youth empowerment
By Professor Emmanuel Ojeme
The subject-matter of Youth Empowerment has attracted the attention of government and significant stakeholders in society. This is quite understandable as the youths of any society represent its future growth and development. It is thus little surprising that the Ministry of Sports of the federal government of Nigeria is designated as Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development.
Whereas this nomenclature signals the fact of Sports as a vital tool for youth development or enhancement, it is observed that there is a paucity of exploratory conversations that have attempted to explicate the capacity or endowment of sports as a tool for youth empowerment.
What is Youth empowerment?
It is conceivable that the concept of empowerment refers to building or increasing capacity to act productively for the benefit of the individual and society. Youth empowerment therefore, could be interpreted as experiences that increase the capacity of youths to take productive actions for their benefits and that of society. Deductively, it is logical to interpret the empowerment of youths through sports programmes and practices as the exploration of the ways and means through which sports is a contributory factor in achieving youth empowerment.
Sports in itself is a social institution that involves engagement in organized physical activities that require skills, techniques and tactics as well as acquisition of the rules of engagement as it takes place in specific environment. A participant in sports must play according to the rules, measure upto the required fitness for engagement which yields intrinsic and extrinsic benefits.
Arising from the foregoing, it is evident that the experience of sports teaches the individual:
1. About rule governed psychomotor behaviour
2. Acquisition of skills
3. Fitness attributes required
4. Disciplined conduct
5. Education
6. Acquaintance with sports tools and facilities
7. Sports wears and implements
8. Initiation into the rich physical cultural heritage of society
9. Opportunities for sports education at higher levels of the education ladder.
Youths that are exposed to structured sports programmes would always find meaning and purpose in their lives. If an activity has capacity to enable its participants to find meaning and purpose in their lives as it is in sports, surely such activity inevitably is a veritable tool for youth empowerment.
Through structured and guided participation in sports, youths can discover their talents and potential which can be nurtured and nourished to blossom into greater achievements for themselves, and society directly or indirectly. Directly, young and talented sports boys and girls can be nurtured and nourished to become champions and global icons, with all the concomitant fame and favour that it attracts.
They gain:
1. Employment
2. Sponsorship
3. National and international honours
4. Means of livelihood
Sports men and women have gone on to earn higher degrees in any of the sub-disciplines of sports epistemology.
On the other hand, acquaintance with sports could blossom into engagement in SME’s in sports related areas of:
i. Equipment and sports wears
ii. Manufacturing of sports wears and implements
iii. Maintenance of sports infrastructure etc
With higher education and training, the wider field of employment and social services delivery are all available to the educated sports man and woman, who could engage in:
1. Sports administration and management
2. Sports journalism and communication
3. Coaching human performance
4. Sports intellectual, scholars and researchers etc
Sports is indeed a veritable tool for youth empowerment and through it the individual could be equipped or empowered for a purposeful life
#eob
PROFESSOR EMMANUEL OJEME
E-mail:successojeme@yahoo.com
