Speaking at a news conference in Mogadishu on Tuesday,
Mr. Abkow accused the country’s past governments of doing nothing in terms of
sports development, adding that only the Somali NOC and its member federations
with the help from the international sports governing bodies mainly from FIFA
and IOC have been financing the development of Somalia sports for nearly 3
decades.
"For so many years our ministry of sport had existed only
by name—I don’t know why such ministry exists if it doesn’t want to spend money
in the development of our sport” the top Somali sporting official noted.
"I would like to call for the new Somali president and his prime minister to work for the inclusion of special budget for the sport development into the national budget of the year” Mr. Abdkow said.
"In this country people are mostly sports-loving and as
everybody knows our sport has played a key role in reconciliation, peace
building and fighting drugs. Our sport succeeded to do all these without
getting a single dollar from Somalia government, so this time the government
must invest in our sport” he added.
In January 1991, Somalia collapsed into chaos and since
after, the country’s sport had been going without a governmental support as all
governments in the country during the period didn’t give much attention to the
sport in this country whose people are mostly sports-loving.
Somali Football Federation Media Department
Email:info@somsoccer.com