LACK OF EXPOSURE AND SUPPORT, A KILLER TO WEST NILE SPORTS TALENT

By Morish Dramadri

Arua city

Sportsmen in West Nile have quoted lack of support and exposure for the sector as the utmost limiting factors for talent developments in the various sports disciplines in the region.

West Nile region currently receives national recognition in the world of sports by the historical achievement of her three main sports personalities, Gold medalist Dorcus Inzikuru, Uganda Cranes’ Caesar Samson Okuti, and Mohamad Shaban, though the region has a number of talented youth struggling to climb the ladder.

Haruna Mawa the team coach of Uganda parliamentary team and former Somali national team while speaking at the climax of the Uhuru talent development and identification tournament at Otraku primary school in Maracha district on Thursday revealed that West Nile’s talent needs more exposure and commitment of the stakeholders to development the talent in the region.

“Going to a national team is another level where you need exposure, if you hear teams like Onduparaka or Arua central they have been in superb, get an opportunity to join those teams, we had people like Shaban, Caesar Okuti and very many others who have been sampled to the national team from the same region, there are players here, they lack exposure,” Haruna revealed.

Bondo Muzamil the national delegate for the Federation of Uganda Football Association (FUFA) for West Nile who doubles as the representative of Maracha district at the regional forum mentioned that, “Maracha is like a land locked country, there very few people supporting football you find very few players been identified and taken to the national level and international level, people cannot spend easily on sporting activities but they love football,” Bondo lamented.  

Meanwhile Uhuru Nelson the aspiring Member of Parliament for Maracha East and the organizer of the Uhuru Talent development and Identification tournament asked the various stakeholders to prioritize talent development in order to kill criminality among the youth.

“Occupy these youth during their free time so that they use their free time constructively, Maracha when it comes to talent we are still sleeping, as a leader I think there is a lot that we need to do, who knew the Lugbaras before Dorcus Inzikuru,” Uhuru cautioned.

But Maracha district chairman Stephen Obitre admitted the limited support towards talent development, appealing for more support from the public.

“We have some support for sports because of meager resources we target only primary schools, the secondary schools are self-sustainable, we have clubs that in division-5, and division- 4 these clubs are just been supported by locally, the players after playing they take ordinary borehole water, they eat potatoes, they eat hard foods, if we could be blessed with supporters we would be able to develop these talents,” Hon. Obitre revealed.