Dayo Akindoju: I’m Ready to Turn Tennis Around

Despite his busy schedule, he still finds time to play at Life Camp or the Package B of the National Stadium Abuja. Enthusiastically abreast of the sport, as President of Nigeria Tennis Federation, Dayo Akindoju wants to elevate the game to world standard

IOn a salvage mission am not overwhelmed. We are coping and I knew all along that there are lots of works to be done to see that tennis does better than it is. It was very down before but there were tennis activities. The problem there is that we didn’t have some basic things that were to see tennis grow. The focus of this federation is to see how we can move tennis to a higher level. It is not going to happen very fast because for development it is a lot of work and it is not something you go and buy in the market. These are human beings playing tennis. They need to be trained, they need to be guided and directed properly so they can play in the world stage. We are doing the work that we need to do to ensure that we improve from where we are.

Following up, working on the programmes

There are four key areas we have identified that we are concentrating on to improve. It is a very broad subject. It is not just the tennis courts but goes beyond that to include equipment, gym facilities, physiotherapy. It is very vast but they are readily known and we said we are going to be concentrating on these things. Another important aspect is improving the player’s knowledge of the game and sense of participation. This too is an all-round thing but when you talk about player, you start from their personal welfare, psychology, education, ability to partake in several tournaments to enable them be in the game regularly.

Thirdly, is about development of the coaches in Nigeria because they are the ones transferring knowledge to the players. If they don’t know what knowledge to transfer then the player’s will not receive the right skills. We said we are going to concentrate on ensuring that the players are properly educated and exposed to trainings, clinics from resource persons all over the world that will upgrade their status. The game of tennis is equally revolving; the balls are faster, the courts are different- clay courts, grass courts and hard courts. It takes a good coach to tell the players what to do at different situations. The coaches we have in Nigeria today are very few to take care of the thousands of players in Nigeria. Lastly, is the area of officiating. In officiating, they are the custodians of the rules of the game. In ITF, their section is separate, they know the rules and they check how the game is played and if the game is not played properly, they are the ones that know. We need our players to know how the game is played. That is why our officials need to be trained to know the current rules of the game which changes and we as officials must be abreast of the current rule.

Training officials, reducing cost of running tournaments

What we have done this year is that we had a group of volunteers; 25 of them that volunteered to partake in officiating. They attended the school as Level 1 organised through the ITF who sent the resource persons. In the past, we discovered that one of the figures which raise the cost of running tournaments in Nigeria is the issue of registered and certified officials. They are very few and you can imagine that a tournament holding in Lagos, we have to move officials from Abuja or Kano, Taraba to officiate in matches taking place in Lagos. There are few major tennis centres in Nigeria and we want a situation where every city that tennis is played should be able to have officials to run tournaments in those cities without necessarily going too far to get officials which will involve accommodation and transportation to bring the officials. This year, we are doing more in four geo-political zones, in Jos to take care of potential and interested persons in the North Central, getting three from each state, Kano will host one, Calabar and Abeokuta (Ogun). Next year we will extend it to areas that were not covered in the first place.

Upping the game An official is an official. Once you are qualified you are qualified but the bottom line is that we had very limited number of officials but with the coming on board of the new 25, mostly resident in Abuja which made it easy and a lot of them aside being lovers of tennis are very well educated, PhD holders, serving senior Military officers and graduates of various disciplines active in the game. The rule is the rule. Whoever can interpret the rule is qualified to manage that office as an official

Tombim, Dayak, GSL, doing more We have been working on getting more sponsors for tournaments. But let me tell you that in the area of facilities mentioned earlier. The tournaments are good but for the major purpose of development of the game, the major problem we have identified that is causing development not to go as fast as it should is what we call a proper tennis academy. We don’t have in Nigeria today, a full tennis academy with all the facilities that it takes to play tennis and that is the major focus of this federation. We are looking at partnering with groups of potential sponsors to build proper tennis academies all over Nigeria. Simply, a school of tennis where you attend the normal curriculum of schooling from Primary to Secondary school up to age 14 and 15. It is likely to be more of boarding and regulated. Tennis takes a lot. It includes the food you eat, controlled and monitored time, weight, mental fitness, everything about you. They are graded. We can have a small academy or a big one. That can accommodate up to 50 students or the ones for 200, some can have up to 500. These students are coming to those academies to study and then play tennis. This is a major but the only thing that is not available in Nigeria. Every academy we have in Nigeria today are using some form of public or private facilities that does not belong to them, they don’t have control over them while the schooling part of the academy is not there. What we have they call academy are just playing courts where coaches teach the kids but the kids go back home, what they eat; what they do after is not controlled by the coach who does not have the full knowledge of the activities of the player. In a controlled environment which you find all over Europe, America, that is why they are doing very well and set up to work. Among the top 100-200 players in the world today, 100 per cent of them went through Tennis Academies. You cannot hit top 100 in the World without going to a school to be taught how tennis is played. So we cannot expect to do extremely well. A lot of the players that we have today that are doing extremely well here have either attended academies in Spain, in the U.S. and others. Of course, we cannot afford to be sending our kids to the U.S. or Europe. My federation has applied for space within the National Stadium Package B which we want to build hostel facilities. This is our first way of starting something. But that is not a tennis academy. An academy can happen anywhere in the country where the basic facilities that are required to run a school are provided 2, 3 or 4 hectares of land with up to 10 tennis courts with all the