| Summary: | Sports is globally regarded as having the ability to foster friendship and peaceful coexistence
among peoples across such different barriers as skin colours, country of origin, religion, gender as well
as social strata. Sport is a strong source of harnessing diversities that may exist in a political system for
sustainable socio-economic and political development. Sports have been used by different countries as
justifiable mechanism for foreign policy and a veritable vehicle for peaceful co-existence. However,
just as sport is capable of promoting friendship, it can also be used as an instrument of development in
same way as it can foster national cohesion especially in plural and heterogeneous societies. To that
extent, this paper sets to establish the extent to which sports can be used to engender development. It
relied on the qualitative method of gauging information to establish its case. The study reveals that,
indeed sports has the potentials of promoting national cohesion in a clime that is fragmented along
many divisive lines such as ethnicity, religion, language and many other centrifugal forces; it further
reveal that sports can also engender development in all facets such that is will enhance the standard of
living of the people. The paper suggests among other things that, there is the need for the government
to synergize with the private sector in order for the people and the society at large to reap the benefits
that lays in sports and in the sport industry.
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