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By Theresa Donatus, Uyo
One of the Frontline governorship Aspirant on Peoples Democratic Party platform in Akwa Ibom State Obong Ide Owodiong Idemeko has assured the people of Akwa Ibom State especially sports lovers of his determination to give sports priority attention and ensure several youths will be taken off the street to pursue decent career in sports.
Ide an Ex staff of ExxonMobil and the International coordinator of 1001+voices Initiative for Empowerment of People made the remarks at Correspondents Chapel Arena, a Public Interactive Programme of the Correspondents Chapel of NUJ Akwa Ibom State council
According to him,” There is this aspect of me some people don’t know, we use to have a football club called Mobil Pegasus Club which I ran for seven years. I took it from amateur division 4 to become a professional club and also play in the professional league. I ran that team when I was just 23 years of age and was recognized as the best football administrator in the state.
Ide who said he has deep experience in sports administration which the people will benefit from, noted that It was during his time as the manager of the club that Eket township stadium was approved to be used for playing professional league.
According to him,” it was during my time too that we got Exxon Mobil to build the popular stand, perimeter fence and to beautify the stadium. That was an era of sports development in this state that am very proud to identify with, unfortunately the club was disbanded because of unexpected community crisis and am sure we have all leant from the mistakes of the past and will protect such legacy when we have it.
He also acknowledged seeing lots of opportunities in sports for young people to be engaged and groomed for higher achievements said If elected he will overhaul the ministry of sports and appoint a high-powered sports development officer for the state whose job will be to coordinate and develop all aspects of sports.
Speaking further he said , “we will equally see how our young people can appreciate and see sports as an opportunity for self-actualization, making money, winning laurels and making the state and the country proud.
“ I have also discovered another area we have to fully integrated by bringing the women and youths Ministries together, I will isolate the sports ministry from youths and unite youths and women ministries. we will focus to see how we can develop four semantics areas in human capacity development which includes governance and participation in public life, how we can get our youth to get involved in public life, economic empowerment for them and how we can end the culture of violence which include all violent activities, like campus gangsterism, gangsterism in secondary school and ensuring peace at all levels. All these are already programme in the United Nations charter on women and youth development. We will focus on it during the engagement with youths especially in the area of sports” he enthused.
The Governorship hopeful while speaking on the recent planned selling of some assets of one of the oil firms operating in the state said,” There could be a number of reasons why the IOCs are divesting, it could be because of return on capital investment, the challenges around operations, Security issues, more prospects elsewhere and others. But more importantly we should be happy that we have competent indigenous companies and business men in the position to benefit from the divestment opportunities.
“It is not easy to have a divorce having had the IOC’s around with us for long time and it could be a blessing to our indigenous firms who are the beneficiaries of these opportunities. It is normal in business and every good business goes through a robust business plan to see if it is necessary to continue or not. For us as Nigerians, it is a good opportunity for our local business men”.
