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To ensure lasting peace in Plateau State, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Citadel Sports Advancement Foundation is organising a basketball tournament with a view to uniting citizens of Plateau Northern Senatorial Zone through sports.
The basketball tournament will jump off today at the Dadin Kowa Youth Centre with teams from the four local governments in the Northern Senatorial Zone participating.
Speaking to journalists in Jos at the weekend, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the NGO, Dabis Sunday Christopher, lamented the crisis that had bedeviled the Plateau North Senatorial Zone in the past, saying the organisation would use sports to bring peace to the zone and Plateau as a whole.
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“As an NGO in Plateau State, we would continue to promote peaceful co-existence among the youths.
“Citadel Sport is a non-profit organization in Jos with the intent to use sports as a platform to impart life skills to the Nigerian youth and to provide them with talent-building opportunities while teaching them the fundamentals of different sports.
“Our activities are focused and formed to teach players accountability, respect, teamwork, and the benefit of hard work. This project is aimed at promoting peace, reconciliation and empowering Nigerian youths through active engagement in sporting activities.
“As a group, we are using sports to douse tension in restive areas and demilitarize the youths and help them engage in productive ventures and to disabuse their minds from social vices that hinder human resource development.
“We also seek to promote social integration, community capacity building, crime reduction, security consciousness, health and lifestyles amongst the youth population via a sensitization on issues such as drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, violence and gender inequality during the sport tournaments.”
He also said that the mega-basketball tournament, which will end on December, 16, will assemble a minimum of 7000 youths from various parts of Plateau State.
“We shall also give leaders and other stakeholders from the state the opportunity to address the youths based on current realities and concerns. The competition is organised to bring youths from all backgrounds to tell the entire nation that we are peace ambassadors, that we put our differences aside and celebrate peace,” Dabis added.
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