Enugu State Governor, Dr Peter Mbah, has said that the state would host its sports festival in 2024 as part of its sports development and also prepare the state for the next National Sports Festival (NSF), where it targets a top-three finish.
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Mbah, who rued the decline in sports development and pedigree of Enugu State, said the positions occupied by the state in the past 20 years do not represent the history of the state as home for champions in various sports fields.

The governor said his administration had designed a state sports policy, which sees sports beyond recreation, but as a huge business and investment platform, explaining that the state would host a sports summit in 2024 to harness the state’s investment potentials in sports.

Mbah made this known at the weekend when he received Sports Minister, John Enoh, who was in his office during a working visit to the state.

He said: “We have designed a comprehensive policy document on sports. Just like the current Federal Government, we see sports as a revenue generation sector. And that is essentially how we have designed a lot of our policies around sports.

“Sometime next year, we will be hosting a sports summit where we will be showcasing the investment opportunities that we have in our sports sector; and we are going to be extending our invitation to you and other sports sector stakeholders and investors.

“Enugu has always been a home to sports legends in all fields, not just football. It also has a history, reputation and passion for sports. So, we want to bring Enugu back to that past glory as a city and a state for sports legends. We have raw and unharnessed talents, which we want to groom to become world talents.

“We have initiated a couple of programmes. Next year, we are going to have our own Enugu State Sports Festival; and the idea is for us to raise that awareness that we can actually build this talent and groom them so that they become future legends.

“We think that the records we had in the last 20 years do not reflect who we are. Our target is to see that we come within the top three in the next National Sports Festival; and part of why we want to have our own internal sports festival next year is essentially because we want to build the team that we can go with to make Enugu State proud.”

Earlier, Sports Development Minister, Enoh, who lauded Mbah’s initiatives in sports development, expressed the Federal Government’s eagerness to partner with Enugu in grassroots sports development.
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