42 schools set for USOSA Sports Carnival in Abuja

A total of 42 schools from across the country will fight for honours at the second Sports Carnival being organised by the Schools Old Student Association (USOSA), aimed at promoting nationhood and social cohesion.

The 2024 USOSA theme of the sports carnival is tagged: ‘Reigniting Unity in Diversity’ will commence tomorrow and end on April 27, in Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

President General of the Association, Michael Magaji, said that the Golf tournament has been integrated into the competition to help strengthen the aging.

Magaji said that the participants would be draw from 42 schools to participate in 14 games.

He noted that the carnival was conceived as part of USOSA project call Nigeria unit’s.

“We are using sports as a tool to showcase unity, nationhood, and social cohesion among USOSANS and non-USOSANS. The sports carnival is part of our project unite, and this will look at the wellness, health, careers and different components of living.

“The carnival will bring together 3,000 USOSANS and 2,000 non-USOSANS. The idea is to situate Nigeria and position sports as a tool for focus to see how best we can help to unite this country, how to kick out the narrative of nation building. As you know, it’s not an easy task to build a country, not even in the developed world. We have 10 challenges, but we want to show the government that we’re interested in nation trusted unity.”

Also speaking, the head of the Local Organising Committee, Mr Mohammed Mustapha, said the association was working toward reviving sports across schools in the country.

He called for partnership from sports stakeholders and other well-meaning Nigerians to uplift the nations.

“We will have board games, Ludo chairs, scrambles and others, so it’s going to be a back to back form games. We will have exhibition areas and no USOSANS are also part of the exhibition. It also is open because we need to put a message out there for everybody to come on that banner of unity to understand why we must move away from where we are today,” Mustapha stated.