While speaking on the goals of the games, Mr Raji said the programme’s primary goal is to utilise sports as a tool to engage and empower youth, regardless of their backgrounds or affiliations and to foster unity, promote physical activity, and reduce negative social behaviours such as crime and drug use among young people.
“Of course, if you look at sports, sports is a major requirement across the world. Lots of people relate to Nigeria in the world, everywhere in the world. And that was what we capitalised on, that we want to be able to do sports to refine and to bring together and to engage our youth.
“If there’s anything any youth in this country embraces without thinking about where they would come from, it’s sport. So, that was the first goal. And we can go on to talk about achieving that in Nigeria.
“Sports alone is an economy where we can, apart from creating wealth for our youth, we can as well create wealth for the country. So, part of our target is to be able to build and grow a lot of talent from this university.
“Of course, it’s a journey, a journey of a thousand miles starting with a step. Hopefully, in the next few years, we’ll be able to see some of our talent developed from this university.”
In her remark, the Vice-Chancellor, Fountain University, Professor Ramota Karim, said the association’s foresight was laudable, as sports was not only capable of uniting Nigerians as people, but can also reduce youth restlessness and enhance peaceful co-existence amongst the youths.
