Organisers of the maiden edition of Honourable Mudasiru Obasa’s sports festival tagged ‘Obasa Games 2024’ have promised to discover young talents that will represent the country at major sports competitions in the future, PUNCH Sports Extra reports.
The festival, organised by King Sports International in honour of the Lagos State House of Assembly Speaker, Rt. Hon. Mudashiru Obasa, will run from November 15 through December 14 at three centres in Orile-Agege LCDA and Agege Local Government in Lagos.
While addressing journalists at the press conference at the Agege Local Government Secretariat on Friday, the Chairman of the Organising Committee, Abdulganiyu Obasa, said the event was organised to give talented youth players in Agege and its environs the opportunity to showcase their talents and a pathway to local and international recognition.
“Sport is not only football, and that is why we decided to upscale what we are doing and our ambition, and we decided to move the competitions to Lagos-West Senatorial District and not Agege alone,” he said.
He continued, “We will be having five sports, namely football, table tennis, boxing, scrabble, and chess. We are looking to pick teams from various local governments within Lagos-West Local Government as well as talented individuals participating in other sports like boxing, scrabble, and chess.
“There will be a large scouting programme where scouts will be coming from various places to look for talent the same way they did last year, and this time it will be bigger. This will allow them to continue their development elsewhere. This is the primary objective of this programme and we want to give these young athletes the platform to achieve their dreams of representing the country at the Olympics or other national assignments.
“We want our youngsters to take advantage of this programme and see it as a way of expressing themselves.”
The tournament, according to the organisers, welcomes athletes not older than 19 years of age.
“The event is for those who are U-19 because we want the young ones to grow and we want to see the players in scrabble and chess at the next Olympics, and that is our goal and vision,” he added.
Also, the organisers announced the sum of N3m cash reward for winners of the football competition, while second and third-placed teams will pocket N2m and N1m, respectively.
In the boxing and table tennis events, the winners in the male and female categories will take home N500,000 each, while the four first-runners-up will get N300,000 each and the third-place winners get N200,000 each.
Obasa also confirmed that a prize gift of N1m has been set aside for both scrabble and chess participants.
Anwar-Ul Islam Model College Agege and the Dairy Farm field will host the football competition, while other events will take place at the indoor hall of the Agege Stadium.