Rivers give instant cash reward to medalists

Team Rivers is doing everything possible to give hosts, Delta, a good fight on the medals table at the ongoing 21st National Sports Festival.

In 2011, Rivers finished on top of the medals table, beating Delta at the end of the fiesta tagged: Garden City Games. Since then, Rivers has not been able to replicate such performance. But things may change for the Rivers athletes in Asaba, if the words of the state Commissioner for Sports, Barrister Christopher Green, are anything to go by.

Speaking with The Guardian yesterday, Green revealed that Team Rivers is in Delta with a contingent of 876 athletes, the second largest behind Team Delta at the festival.

At the last edition held in Benin City, Edo State, Team Rivers presented about 400 athletes. According to Green, Team Rivers’ target is to prove a point that the state is a key producer of athletes in Nigerian sports.

To motivate the athletes to give their best in Delta 2022, Green has ordered a cash reward for every gold medalist. He described as untrue, social media reports that Rivers State has reduced payment of monthly salary for contract athletes from 11 months to four months.

“That is not true. We have two categories of athletes on our payroll. We have our staff athletes and coaches and we also have contract athletes. We agreed to pay our contract athletes 11 months and that has not changed. But we discovered a lot of ghost names on the list of the contract athletes.

“Even those that were decamped in Port Harcourt still found their way into the list here in Asaba. We are verifying it and as soon as the verification in completed, the athletes and the coaches will get their 11 months salary complete. I was once an athlete, and I won’t do something that will hurt any of