This weekend, the 22nd edition of Nigeria’s premier sports tournament, the National Sports Festival ,NSF, kicks off in Ogun State amid song and drum, and the spectre of a wide audience.
Given the massive preparations, the state-of-the-art sporting infrastructure and the reinvention of historical monuments to give visitors to the state a great feel of its culture and traditions, and more importantly the avowed determination of the Dapo Abiodun administration to give Nigeria and indeed all of Africa a festival like no other, Ogun, the home of the best talent in Nigerian music ,talk of the Abami Eda, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Haruna Ishola, Ayinla Omowura, Ebenezer Obey, K1 the Ultimate, etc and literature ,Wole Soyinka, Femi Osofisan, etc, is bound to host Nigeria’s most exciting moments in the next two weeks.
The stage is set and the performers are fully ready to thrill the audience like they ,the audience, have never been treated. Ogun raw sporting talents, from athletics to boxing, and from volleyball to football, among others, are set to slug it out with talents from around the country, showing the rhythms of Nigeria’s sporting endowments, its rich culture, its incredibly diverse population, and its future.
Ogun 2025 is bound to be arguably the best sporting event in Sub-Saharan Africa in recent times. The opening ceremony will be spectacular, comparable to what you find at the Olympics or FIFA -organised tournaments, and full of drama, colour, excitement.
The Gateway State is hosting over 12000 athletes, and the accommodation arrangements are superb. And from its fabrics to its monuments and, of course, its unbeatable cuisine, visitors are going to have the best of Ogun State from May 16 to 30, marking the second time the state has staged the multi-sports fiesta after hosting the 2006 edition.
No doubt, many great talents will emerge from the festival, joining the great names of previous tournaments. In the years gone by, many great Athletes rose from the NSF to global stardom.
To mention just a few of the names, there was the Queen of the Tracks, Mary Onyali, who was first discovered at the Kwara ’85 Games; Falilat Ogunkoya, who would go on from the NSF to become the first Nigerian woman to win an individual Olympics track medal ,at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games; Deji Aliu, a multiple-time African champion and World Cup medallist, and Chika Chukwumerije, the first person from Sub-Saharan Africa to win an Olympic medal in Taekwondo, and the first African Taekwondo athlete to compete at three Olympic Games.
There was also Yusuf Alli, who represented Nigeria in 1980 at the Moscow Games, and at the Los Angeles 1984 and Seoul 1988 Olympics games. Get behind the steering, or get on a bus to Abeokuta, and witness history live as new names emerge to cement Nigeria’s sports legacy