The Forum of State Directors of Sports and General Managers has issued a strong collective rejection of the proposed reduction in the number of sporting events for the 2026 National Sports Festival scheduled to hold in Enugu, warning that the decision threatens to trigger a nationwide boycott by states and demanding the immediate reinstatement of all removed sports.
In a formal position statement issued after extensive deliberations among members, the Forum accused the National Sports Commission of deliberately sidelining state directors from the decision-making process, in direct violation of an agreement reached at an earlier stakeholders’ meeting in Calabar where it had been resolved that state directors would be actively involved in selecting the sports to be featured at the festival.
The statement, signed by the Forum’s Secretary, Tunde Ajibike, alongside the Interim Chairman and the Public Relations Officer, described the commission’s unilateral action as unacceptable and stated that the Forum opposed it entirely. The directors demanded the full reinstatement of all removed traditional sports, specific Olympic disciplines, and board games that had been dropped from the programme without adequate consultation or justification.
The Forum challenged the commission’s apparent assumption that it fully understood the complexities of state-level sports management, pointing out that the National Sports Commission did not directly manage athletes and coaches at the state level and therefore could not fully appreciate the scale of planning, funding, and year-round training investments that states made in preparing for the festival.
“It is therefore unacceptable that after such investments, certain sports are arbitrarily removed, with assurances of alternatives that are neither clear nor credible,” the Forum stated, adding that the commission was taking states for granted in a manner that would no longer be tolerated.
The directors also raised serious concerns about claims that participation in the Para Games would be used as a qualification criterion for the festival, questioning both the legal basis for such a requirement and whether states had been given adequate institutional support to navigate the bureaucratic processes involved in securing government approvals for Para Games participation.
In a pointed warning directed at organisational preparedness, the Forum stated that if the host state lacked the infrastructure and capacity to accommodate all approved sports, the hosting rights for the festival should be reconsidered and reassigned to a more adequately prepared state, citing past precedents in which similar decisions had been taken to protect the integrity of the competition.
The 2026 National Sports Festival, branded as Coal City 2026, was expected to bring together athletes from across the country, but the deepening disagreement between state sports administrators and the National Sports Commission now cast significant uncertainty over the scale and quality of state participation.
