Abstract

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The purpose of this study was to assess Nigeria`s Professional athletes plans for sustainability of life after retirement. To achieve this purpose, two (2) purpose of the study, research questions and research hypotheses were stated for this study.Survey research design was used for this study. The population of this study consists of 644 professional athletes of Handball, Basketball and volleyball in Nigeria in the purposively selected states. Purposive sampling technique was used to select one (1) state each from the Six (6) Geo-political Zones in Nigeria consisting of Edo State (South South), Imo State (South East), Lagos State (South West), Yobe State (North East), Kaduna State (North West) and FCT Abuja (North Central). These states were selected because they had professional athletes who had retired over the years and are likely to face the challenges of life after retirement. Due to the smaller number of the population of six hundred and forty-four (644) professional athletes, which consists of Handball, Basketball and Volleyball athletes, the researcher used all the population as sample for this study. The instrument for data collection in this study is a researcher`s self developed questionnaire. The self developed questionnaire consists of seven (7) sections A, B, C, D, E, F and G. For the purpose of establishing content and face validity of the instrument, the instrument developed was given to jurors in the Department of Human Kinetics and Health Education, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria for vetting. The data collected was analyzed using descriptive statistics of frequencies and percentage to analyze the demographic characteristics of the respondents, mean and Standard deviation was used to answer the research questions while Chi-Square statistics was used to test the research hypotheses due to the ordinal nature of the data at 0.05 level of significance. The results of the study revealed that savings is not a significant determinant of sustainability of life after retirement, among Nigeria professional athletes. Reasons being that the chi square calculated, P-value of 0.440 is greater than the 0.05 alpha level of significance and the chi square (2) Cal. value of 30.502 is lower than the chi square critical value of 31.41 at df 20. Therefore it was hereby retained. Results for investment showed that investments is a significant determinant of the sustainability of life after retirement, among Nigeria professional athletes. Reasons being that the chi-square calculated with P-value of 0.662 is higher than the 0.05 alpha level of significance and the computed chi square value of 13.744 is lower than the chi-square critical value of 31.41 at df 20. Therefore the result is hereby retained. The researcher concludes that the level of savings towards retirement, investment and capability to invest of the professional athletes are very low and therefore cannot significantly affect their sustainability of life after retirement. The study recommends that savings level of the professional athletes in Nigeria is very low and therefore very important that their salaries and remunerations be considerably increased and promptly paid to allow them make some savings towards retirement plans and the investments level of the athletes is very low as most do not have any investment and therefore be advised to invest in shares and stocks for their retirement.

Keywords: Athletes, Plans, Professional, Retirement, Sustainability