CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Background to the Study
Sport in Nigeria has grown from a humble beginning as an entertainment and recreational pastime to a prominent phenomenon whose influences are felt in all facets of lives of citizenry. It has become an important aspect of the Nigeria culture due to its popularity among the citizenry. It is as important as the basic necessities of life, like food, clothing and shelter. This importance and power of sports have been highly recognized by the Nigeria state and had used it to pursue its foreign policy and diplomatic agenda as well as foster national unity and socio-cultural integration. Examples of such moves by the Nigerian government are the hosting of the 1973 All African Games after the Nigerian civil war to demonstrate to the world that Nigeria is united, sate, and secure; the introduction of the Nigerian Sports Festival in 1973 as a means of fostering unity and cultural integration after the Nigerian civil war; etc. (Boit, 2000).
    In further recognizing the power of sports especially for Nigerian children in promoting their physical, mental and socio-economic development, the Nigerian state introduced sports in schools. That is, considering the role of sports in the all-round development of the child and youths, Nigerian Government came up with a policy aimed at ensuring that sport is offered as a compulsory subject at the Nursery, Primary and Secondary school levels of the formal education system.
    According to the UN office on Sport for development and Peace (2010), the Nigerian National Policy on Sports was aimed at ensuring that:
i.    all primary and secondary schools have playgrounds for sports as condition for approval for their establishment;
ii.    no pupil(s) or student(s) (including those in tertiary institutions) suffers any penalty or discrimination for participating in sports; etc.
It is believed that the proper implementation of the policy will enable the children have such core values as fair play, discipline, friendship, leadership, peace, equality, self-discovery, etc. (Mgbor, 2002).
    According to Fasan (2004) in Ogunbiyi (2005), one of the most important phenomena which cut across all human endeavours is sport. Its knowledge has contributed immensely to the art and science of discoveries. Students like to engage in the same sports as their age grades, they feel secured, relaxed and well understood in the midst of their peers and overcome challenges together.
    However, though students engage in all kinds of sport available in order to develop physically, mentally and even academically, their performance is not encouraging at all especially during competitions and in comparison with expected standard. They do not perform to expectation. This manifests through their poor outing in major competitions.
    It is therefore, the concern of this study to investigating the factors influencing the performance of students in sports with regards to secondary school students in Ilorin West.
Statement of the Problem
    Various attempts have been made in the past to explore the performance of students-athlete in local and national competitions with a view to ascertaining their performance level. Emmanuel (2006) carried out a study of the performance of students in selected sports in Calabar Municipality. It was found out among others that the students’ performance was not encouraging; that it fell below expectation and standard. Earlier on, John (2004) conducted a study of the performance level of students in sport activities in relation to their performance in other class subjects. The researcher concluded that students’ performance in sporting activities was below 40% while their performance in other core subjects was above 60%. He then submitted that there seems to be more attention given to the core subjects than the sporting activities. This thus becomes worrisome considering the fact that sports contribute to the oneness of Nigeria and has brought about our binding spirit. It also helps to develop the participants mentally and physically. That is why the school sports become imperative to ensure all-round development of the students.
This study becomes imperative to study those variables that are responsible for this poor performance as identified in the earlier works. Hence, this work intends to provide the missing links in those works by not just affirming the poor performance of students in sports but tracing the causes of the poor outings in sporting activities. This study, therefore, attempts to find out the causes of this poor performance with particular reference to secondary school students.