President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has advised athletes that they must be disciplined if they want to go far with their sports careers.
“Alcohol, prostitution, fighting and all that, don’t go well with sports and they can ruin your life. Sports must go with discipline and the fear of the Lord, then your future will be bright,” President Museveni said.
The President made the remarks as he hosted a group of athletes to a State luncheon at State House Entebbe.
The luncheon was organised by the President and the First Lady who also serves as the Minister of Education and Sports, Maama Janet Museveni.
The athletes included those who participated in the World Athletics Championships in Budapest-Hungary and National School Teams that participated in the Federation of East Africa Secondary Schools Sports Association (FEASSSA).
President Museveni also congratulated the teams that have been doing well for Uganda in the past years.
“In the recent past, you have just heard about the performance in Oregon, Budapest and in Rwanda. Before that we had Tokyo where we watched the Olympics. I really want to thank you. I’m an old sportsman and a sports enthusiast as well as some sort of sports historian because I have been watching the performance of our teams, starting with the one of 1954 in Perth, Australia,” he said.
President Museveni revealed that sports development in Uganda was a bit delayed due to bad politics in the past regimes where the country’s economy totally collapsed.
“But even during that bad time in 1972, that is when Akii-Bua won his hurdles in Munich, Germany. By the time we came into the government in 1986, the system of the country had really collapsed. Therefore, we concentrated on minimum recovery of the economy, the expansion of the small modern sector, diversification and then introducing the new sectors which were not there before,” he said.
“What I can say now is that we have not yet started because we have not really done so much for sports specifically. We have not yet started seriously to take advantage of our potential.”
President Museveni also welcomed the concept of developing minimum zonal infrastructure to promote sports from the grassroot.
“Having two stadiums per zone in all the 19 zones. That is a very good idea, we shall study it and we shall have to determine whether we put this zonal infrastructure in schools or one in school and one in public. That would be a very good beginning for those zonal competitions to take place.”
On the other hand, the President underscored the role of sports in the country.
“I always tell you the value of sports, they are good for fitness , character building, it trains people about the good thing of cooperation since sports needs teamwork, entertainment for the spectators and finally it has become a source of living for the sports people.
Therefore, sports should be properly understood and explained to our people,” he said.
“Because of that, even when we had little capacity, that is when I undertook that effort of saying that anybody who wins a gold medal, my Office of State House will give him a monthly stipend of Shs5m, silver medal Shs3m, then the one of bronze I think its Shs1m.”
The President also promised that the beneficiaries that have since missed out on the offer ever since it was put in place, were going to receive their full payments.
He further reiterated his call to attach personalities who are doing well in sports into the prisons, police, army and Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), saying that this will help them to have an address and a small salary.
President Museveni also informed the sports men and women that the government was going to allocate a bus to each sports zone in the country.
The luncheon was also attended by the Minister of State for Sports, Hon. Peter Ogwang, Members of Parliament, officials from the Ministry of Education and Sports and Uganda Secondary Schools Sports Association, among others.
