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By Akanji Alowolodu, Bauchi
The grand finale of the Secondary Schools Sports tournament organised by the North-East Development Commission (NEDC) has commenced at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Memorial Stadium in Bauchi with the Six States of the subregion participating.
The States contingents are participating in the finals of baseball, lawn tennis, athletics and football between Monday and Friday when the tournament will close.
The tournament became necessary as the NEDC is now poised to rebuild the North-East by creating an enabling environment for the recovery and development of the subregion.
One of the Fund’s mandates is the promotion of sports for youths development considering that sports have been proven to be an effective tool for bringing communities together and fostering social cohesion and peace-building.
Given the situation in the North East subregion, where there are many challenges of mistrust and suspicion, sports can be leveraged in bridging fractured relationships across social, cultural and religious divides within the communities and inculcating a sense of shared identity and fellowship amongst youths in the region.
This is why the tournament and competition are organized to promote Unity peace and regional integration.
Purpose of the Program is to organise competitions where talents can be discovered and nurtured in conjunction with established institutions, provide youths with local and international opportunities to engage in professional sporting careers for enhanced income.
This can be achieved through the following two-pronged approach: Organizing sporting competitions across the region and Identification of talents through systematic documentation of recorded accomplishments; developing the capacity of games masters in schools and enrolment of competent youth in sports academies for further development.
Thus, it is essential, therefore, to begin remediating all those human development and multi dimensional poverty indices challenges in all the States in the North-East and to generate the needed human capital capacity to drive the various socio-economic sectors of the Region.
The NEDC stated that, “Given the foregoing, there is no gainsaying that the education sector deserves special attention, especially at the basic level. Strategic and significant investments must be made in providing 21st-century basic education across the Region.”
It also stressed that,”The availability of effective basic education in post-conflict communities can provide life-saving information and protect children from trafficking and recruitment by armed groups. Considerable effort is needed to ensure that children deprived of educational facilities are given access to quality education within safer schools.”
The NEDC is intended to address the poor human development indices, high illiteracy rate and high poverty levels of the North-East, by developing sufficient human capital to acquire the adequate capacity for infrastructural and socio-economic development of the North East subregion.
The following functions and objectives of the NEDC are drawn from the broad goal of the NEDC which includes To build Adequate Manpower for a 21″-century North East Economy and to sustainably improve the basic education sub-sector through the provision of requisite infrastructure, equipment, furniture, teaching and learning materials and training/retraining of teachers.
It is to also galvanize partners’ synergy in ensuring the delivery of qualitative learning to students, support the immediate and midterm injection of multi-sector market-driven skills into the region as well as support the injection of specialized professional skills over the mid to long term in the region that are both locally and internationally relevant.
The NEDC is to also contribute to peacebuilding in the region through strategic grassroots sports Initiatives, create a platform for networking and cross-pollination of ideas by the upcoming North East Intelligentsia.
To ensure equity in access to future opportunities by providing scholarships to less privileged students. To coordinate the targeting and mobilization of resources for investments in the education sector.
In the opening football match, Adamawa State defeated Yobe State through penalty shootout after the regulation time ended in a One all draw. The Adamawa team scored 5 penalties while Yobe scored 4 of its penalties.
The second match of the day was played between Bauchi State and Borno State which was won by the Bauchi State team by a lone goal.
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