Football legend and former Green Eagles superstar, Segun Odegbami (MON) has lauded the organisational standard of the ongoing 2nd African Military Games in Abuja, describing the level of discipline and competition at the games are highly impressive.
He made observations while speaking on Arise News’ daily programme ‘The Morning Show’, monitored in Abuja yesterday.
He commended the organisers for achieving the spirit of Olympism with the floorless organisations of the Games, saying the Military has set a new standard for the rest of sports to follow.
“The organisation, level of discipline, competition and the level at which you find people actually imbibing the spirit of Olympism, which is about friendship, are highly commendable. I think the Military has set a new standard for the rest of us, that is my biggest observation and takeaway.
“In those days we actually have in every sports federation in this country, a military personnel attached and once they are in the federation, they carry with them their altitude of been strict, straight forward and discipline and it impacted on all the federations. But since they left, you now find disorganization and so on and so forth.
“I have seen floorless organisations in this Military Games. The friendship among the athletes, how they interact and eat together, how you go to the competition without hearing anybody stealing, fighting, hooliganism, vandalism are the biggest takeaways and the rest of sports must drinking from this fountain. It shows the direction sports should be and the Military are championing the course,” he said.
Odegbami stated further that the leadership of the Nigeria Armed Forces has shown the managers of Nigeria’s sports on best to make good use of the Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja with the hosting of AMGA 2024 and they shouldn’t allow the success of the Games to diminish away.
“There is a facility in Amsterdam owned by a football club, they use it for eight hours every week but that facility works 24 hour everyday, seven days a week in all other related activities.
“The Stadium in Abuja was designed with that concept in mind, that it will be working day and night outside of the sports that actually take place there.
“What this event, AMGA 2014, has just done is to show us that possibility. If you go to the stadium right now, you will find a huge amount of activities that are going on both social and commercial, that is just scratch it on the surface. I heard that Stadium will be converted into a sports city that will have banks, hotels and so on, that is the future and we are just being reminded by the AMGA 2024 that that possibility exists and we shouldn’t allow the success of this game to diminish. We should just go from now onward to attend that target we have set for ourselves,” Odegbami concluded.
While also speaking on the same Arise News programme yesterday, Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, said the Nigeria Armed Forces has showcase Nigeria to the rest of the world with the floorless organisation of AMGA 2024.
“The good thing about the Military is that we are so organised that we have different specialisms. We have those of them into sports, fighting, signal, engineering, medical, mechanical and so on. We have different appedixsm that can operate under the same body, nobody is distracted, but focus and we remain in doing that. Of course, we were able to showcase Nigeria to the outside world and prove to everyone that Nigeria is safe.
“I’m sure you saw a trading video about Ugandan-man that went viral. He went round Abuja and was lamenting that he was told Abuja is dangerous, that there are a lot of criminals and everything is happening in Nigeria, but only to come to see how Abuja is so peaceful, clean, organized and he was amazed, this is it.
“Before they came here, some of them were informed wrongly because if you listen to international media it is like Nigeria is a war zone but they came and saw something different. The level of organisation as our legend here mentioned has been wonderful, within a short period we were able to put this together.
“Our prayers are that the facilities that we are able to revive should be sustained and maintained.
“Frankly speaking, myself as an individual, I never knew how large, massive the Abuja Stadium was until I went round to see that we have a carpark that could take up to five thousand vehicles, we have so many places that we don’t know about , but it is important we put them into good use. “
