Ogun State Government at the weekend launched its school sports festival aimed at unearthing and developing talents from the grassroots.

Speaking at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding between the government and the project consultants, Ogun State Youth and Sports Commissioner, Moroof Afolabi Afuwape, said Governor Ibikunle Amosun’s administration was committed to transforming the state into a talent factory.

“The administration has upgraded the sports infrastructure in the state to first-class status and no state in Nigeria boasts what we have at our stadiums. We also have the technocrats that are ready to work. What remains for us is to bring in the private sector to drive first-class competitions.
“The GT Principals Cup and OGSSFEST are the pioneering efforts in this regard,” he said.

The commissioner added that Ogun State government believes success in sports is connected to age, saying that sports stars needed to be discovered and nurtured in their formative years.

“It is of no use discovering a football, tennis or athletics star in his or her late 20s. Most sports thrive on the ‘catch them young’ and now that sports is big business, we also see OGSSFEST as a way of fighting crime and unemployment in the land,” he noted.

Afuwape called on corporate organisations and philanthropists to embrace OGSSFEST not just as corporate social responsibility but in order to reap heaps of marketing advantages as over 4,000 kids will participate in the yearly competition.

The eight sports that will be featured at the championship are athletics, table tennis, football, handball, basketball, scrabble, chess and volleyball.

He revealed that the festivals’ preliminaries will begin in March and run through zonal and divisional contests in May-June, while the four-day grand finale will take place in November.