By Edwin Philip
The President of Nigerian Baseball, Softball and Small League Association, Hon. Uche Odozor has said Nigeria will be filling in baseball players in the 2028 Olympics, slated to take place in Los Angeles United States of America, four decades since the game was introduced in Nigeria.
The President revealed this in a press conference held at the temporary Secretariat of the association at Diplomatic village Central Area FCT Abuja, just days after been elected at the 2024 Annual General Meeting of Nigeria softball and baseball association which happened at Kaduna State Nigeria, along side other executives to over see the affairs of baseball, softball baseball five, the little league and pony baseball.
“We are not too much in a haste to go into tournaments to produce the quality of personnel to be able to do tournaments, so our first bases is not to do tournaments, yes tournament are good competitions are good, 2028 Olympics are there coming, am telling you in this board room that we will stir Nigeria in the right direction that Nigerian jersey for the first time at that tournament.
“We will make bold to commit our time to it, we will make bold to bring Nigeria on board, we have Nigerians all over the world to support this course. Nigeria will be at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles and for that to happen the planning, the development, the players all have to start now, you can’t build something on nothing.
“So baseball is quite huge, and anything that is worth doing is worth doing well, the first thing after the inauguration was to go into the situation room to do a postmortem where exactly are we coming from for a sporting activities that has been around in the past 35 years, what are the take aways what are the new things to be done and those who have the opportunity to stair the lead.”
Odozor said the association is focused on development programmes for baseball in Nigeria, he appreciated the chairman of the Nigerian Sport Commission, mallam Shehu Diko for been committed to baseball, making it clear that development is very crucial, as failure to do so amount to building on a sand as the new leadership of the association is keying into his vision, his developmental plans to actually move baseball to the next level.
” In major countries of the world they have spent time in development, that is why we are retracing out few steps back to development and the short, medium and long term plans will be Marshal out in our detail report which will be made available to each and everyone of you. What we doing today is for you to go and excite families interested in baseball and those who are also ready to join this great family.
According to him, baseball is very big, and important, the reason it is played in most of the largest and developed nations of the world as it is very developmental, it makes smart people smarter, it makes lazy people to be up and doing, it has the potential taking people out of vices.
“if you take to baseball you think good all the time, children who play baseball in colleges check it out have one of the best scores, even people who are a little bit challenged you will find them doing better when they take to baseball.
“Someone asked a question about baseball and how profitable it is, we are not talking about the profit now but again if you want to talk about profit, just few weeks back, baseball made record signing someone in the US, New York mates signed somebody for seven hundred and sixty four million dollars, signed on fee, no other sport had recorded that in the history of sport, not even soccer that is baseball for you” he said.
He added that baseball is largest sporting event played in Japan, baseball is the largest sporting event played in the United States, Canada, largely within south America, North Korea, which is adding there industrial development.
“Japan is only a country of a hundred and twenty four million people, Nigeria is over two hundred million people so you can imagine baseball trickle down to every 774 LGAs in Nigeria, you can imagine how many of our youth that are going to be engaged their minds
“So if we want them to stay away from vices we have to imbibe the model that have work for other nations and that’s why we are going very very basic, straight to the root, to make baseball worth awhile to every individual who are involved in the sport.
“We will be reaching out to the LGA we will be reaching out to the States, we will be reaching out to the parastatals even the military, they are other schools within the military compounds all these will be introduced, we will begin to see a generation of young men and women, we will be reaching out to the North as well, baseball is very friendly with religious tolerance, sensitive to the religious tolerance in the North and am very glad that today the response is completely overwhelming” he added.
He expressed optimism that the millions of young people out of schools problems can be solved baseball, as the association will be engaging with local government structures to export good skills and develop a very local economy using sport, departing a little bit from regular sports like soccer.
The President assured that talks are on the way to ensure that a local governance structure that maintains a basic infrastructure which does not cost that much is put in place.
“Infrastructure wise we are thinking of enhancing and upgrading our facilities especially our international gate way which is the Moshood Abiola National Stadium base ball park, to restore it glory and there history was made in 2003 where Nigeria softball female team defeated the champions in Africa and that was South Africa, history was made that was COJA 2003 in that same pitch to see the pitch today overtaken weeds is a very serious over sight there is a lot to be done and we will not hesitate to engage with the relevant authorities.
“We did do a postmortem to see where did we go wrong in terms of infrastructure, a lot of them are not in good shape, we need support when it comes to our facilities, we have visited one of the facilities in Abuja.
“Abuja is home to a world class baseball facility, they have a base ball park ( Stadium) and also we have a soft ball park right inside moshood Abiola national Stadium and also the little league but part of it is largely overtaken weeds in a very bad shape and we will be looking at some generous Nigerian businesses to take up this opportunity to give it the necessary or needed facelift, so that our children would have a space to train
“Baseball requires smart, baseball requires agile people, we have over 24 million children out of school, baseball community all over the world are looking for players to sign on out of Nigeria.
On his part, the Director General, Administration and Development, Dr. Armstrong Ogwuche, said they are 58 registered clubs in Nigeria with about, 3000 participants, hoping to hit one million participants in 2025.
“We work per Olympics circle so we have a target group, a particular demography that we are aiming to reach out to if we have the next two Olympics circle for the next Olympic, that leads us to about eight years practically and I say seven because this year is almost over in seven years we want to prepare twelve years old, 16 years old who will be about 20 to 23 years old the time they get to the next Olympic there is a lot of work to do” he said.
“But not just the physical performance or entertaining part of sport I want to outline quickly that baseball is one sport that inculcate in a child everything that you want your child to imbibe, we the new executives t have a lot to offer, almost everybody who is somebody in the executive today was a former player, having traveled and experience what baseball is all about and now we are back here in Nigeria today to contribute our quota and give back and this is one of the ways we believe we can give back” he added.
Currently no Nigerian is playing professionally except Nigerian in diaspora who may actually played at that level, there is is no indigenous players that is playing professionalism the major leagues.
Speaking at the press conference, a representative of a foreign partner in baseball, from Maverick Nigeria, a subsidiary of Merjerick Japan and Merjerick Canada, Monato Sato who directs the Nigerian office, said the were motivated to invest in baseball kits development in Nigeria to help direct the future of Nigerian children and give them new opportunities.
“I think a couple of years ago our boss who is Shima Yashinobo came here in Nigeria for baseball project and he also went to other countries in Africa expecially in Nigeria he saw people hungry expecially the children he realized that Nigeria has a good potential such as physical build, that he wants to help children for the future and give them new opportunities, in Nigeria football is the foremost sport if the children cannot play football what else can they do, so Shima thought that probably we should bring baseball in Nigeria and give them new opportunities they can make alot of money from the sport.
He added that his company is not only into gloves making but are also have program now dedicated to all Abuja schools, from the government colleges to the private schools, the remote schools from Nyanya to June to Lugbe to Kubwa, unavailing this program, he is equally a coach going to schools with all the other coaches to introduce the fundamentals and basic of baseball and organise clinics for all the schools.