Oyerinde laments conversion of squash courts to churches

President of the Nigeria Squash Federation, Boye Oyerinde, has appealed to corporate bodies and individuals to join hands in reviving squash in the country.

Oyerinde stated this on Wednesday when he paid a visit to the Chief Executive Officer of HS Media Group, Taye Ige, as part of his efforts to parley with the media to promote squash in Nigeria.

“Our plan and strategy is to rebrand the game of squash in Nigeria and the sport really needs a lot of attention,” he said.



“We took stock of all the squash courts in the country and we realised that we have over 300 courts but less than 10 per cent of them are being used. Some of them have been converted to living rooms, stores and churches.

“We also took stock of our players and we realised also that we have over 400 registered players in our database and we know they will keep coming once we have lots of competitions.

“As I speak, we don’t have a squash national team but we have very good players that can play in any competition in the world and come out with flying colours.

“I know squash facilities and equipment are not cheap to purchase or maintain, so we actually struck a deal with a company called Black Knight, who promised to provide us with the basic equipment at a subsidised rate to encourage us.

“So we want to see how we can have various training programmes to revive the sport. Our target is to build a new set of players who can represent Nigeria in squash competitions across the globe.”

  Credit - PUNCH.