LSSC, Foundation To Promote Basketball For Youth Development
The Lagos State Sports Commission (LSSC) is collaborating with the Erico Sports Legacy Foundation to entrench basketball among the youth in Lagos State, in a bid to deepen sports development and promotion across the state.
Lekan Fatodu, the Director-General of the Commission, disclosed this in his office during a meeting with officials of the Foundation, led by its founder, Michael Erico – a professional basketball player, co-captain of the National Team, D’Tigers, and son of the late Super Eagles Coach, Joe Erico.
The collaboration with the Erico Foundation seeks to share the responsibility of youth empowerment with the government through developmental sports focused on grassroots talent discovery and the school-age category.
Speaking on the partnership, Hon. Lekan Fatodu stated: “As an agency of government, our major responsibility is actually on developmental sports that is focused on grassroots and school-age category potential talent hunt, the area in which Erico Foundation is coming in partnership with the Lagos State Government. This is critical in the sense that youth development cannot be solely undertaken by the State, particularly the Commission.
“It is advantageous for the Commission to partner with corporate bodies, non-governmental organisations, and individuals of goodwill such as the Erico Foundation, whose activities in this regard have been very impressive with documented success stories. This is how we can drive development, empower young people, and channel their paths away from negativity and criminality,” the Director-General concluded.
Hon. Fatodu also informed the public that the foundation’s basketball clinic, coming up next week, would serve as part of the breeding ground for selecting players into the state’s basketball team ahead of the upcoming National Intermediate Games.
“The clinic is structured in a manner that brings a lot of potential talents together, allowing us to identify the best within that age category. It provides an excellent opportunity for our technical team at the Lagos State Sports Commission to sit down with the foundation to identify young people who can feed into the Lagos State team for the Intermediate Games and national competitions. Through this channel, they will also be exposed to international opportunities,” he added.
The Erico Sports Legacy Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, was established in memory of the late Joe Erico by Michael Erico. The foundation has been organising various community impact programmes over the last six years in Lagos State as a way of giving back to the community that raised him.
Reflecting on his vision, Michael Erico said: “I want to make sure we give hope that sports are not just a recreational thing. It is also something through which you can one day live the dream of becoming a professional athlete. That professionalism can then give back to the neighbourhood, impact the culture, and strengthen the deep resilience that Nigerians are known for around the world.
“Our collaboration with the Lagos State Sports Commission is to make this project bigger and more visible, with the future projection of establishing facilities to train, house, and facilitate how these kids grow in the sport of basketball,” he said.
He concluded by noting how vital sports has become to the culture and to the mission of the Lagos State Sports Commission, adding that Lagos remains the hub where most sports stars are made. “Being raised in Lagos myself, it is a duty to work alongside the Director-General to impact grassroots basketball, increasingly transforming these children and helping them become better basketball players,” Erico added.
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