By Michael Jegede
Last year, Distinguished Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, and politician of high repute, known for his philanthropic deeds and enormous contributions to societal growth and service to humanity, began the sponsorship of the Asari Eso neighborhood football tournament in Calabar, Cross River State.
The sponsorship of the neighborhood football championship by Ndoma-Egba, a former Senate Leader and ex-Chairman of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), came after a prompt consideration and adoption of a proposal sent to him by the youths of the Asari Eso Layout where he is resident in Calabar. The tournament was designed as a means to keep the youths engaged, discover talents, promote peace, and enhance youth and sports development in the area.
The second edition of the football competition, which has become one of the community outreach initiatives of the erstwhile parliamentarian who competently represented Cross River Central Senatorial District in the Senate between 2003 and 2015, lasted for three weeks from November 26 to December 17, 2023. The football contest featured twelve teams named after different countries and made up of youths in and around the Asari Eso neighborhood.
Team Brazil defeated Team Nigeria by a lone goal in the final to lift the trophy for the 2023 edition of the championship. Besides going home with the trophy, the winners got a cash prize of N150, 000. The second placed team got a cash prize of N100, 000 while the team that came third received N50, 000. The referees along with all the participating teams equally got cash gifts.
In his speech at the closing ceremony of the 2023 tournament, Ndoma-Egba was reported to have expressed his satisfaction with the proper coordination of the competition, while imploring the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) to take note of all the lapses to be improved upon in the 2024 edition.
Reiterating his constant support and continuous sponsorship of the neighborhood football championship, the ex-Senate Leader said the organizers and participants should endeavor “to justify the purpose of the tournament by continuing to preach and uphold the peace, orderliness and security of the neighborhood.”
Ndoma-Egba has been applauded by many for his gesture in sponsoring the tournament to unite the youths of the Asari Eso neighborhood and create an avenue for talent identification and development in the game of football.
Speaking on the tournament, Acting Head of Department of Entrepreneurship Studies, Faculty of Management Sciences, University of Cross River State (UNICROSS), Dr. Cassius Ayam Ogar, said: “The neighborhood football sponsorship is one of the numerous humanitarian outreaches of Distinguished Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba. The scheme in the past two years has witnessed unprecedented growth and commitment of the street soccer stars. It’s becoming very obvious that the neighborhood yearly fiesta is building up into a global vision. Significantly, from the credibility of the organizers and management of the scheme, some young lads are gaining influential prominence. The vision I believe is to see world class football stars emerge from this seemingly fun-filled street annual event including footballers for the Nigerian national football team. Great football legends like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, etc are products of the street.”
Continuing, Dr. Ogar, the UNICROSS lecturer, who was a beneficiary of the Ndoma-Egba’s scholarship scheme years back, added: “It is important to note that since the advent of this philanthropic gesture by the Distinguished Senator, youths around the environs are now feeling a sense of belonging, love and care. The bond created by this annual event is gradually creating a sense of responsibility among the youths in the area arresting youth restiveness and social vices.
“This gesture by the Distinguished Senator is significantly impacting positively on the security situation in the area as youths are now bonded to avoid the scenario occasioned by the EndSARS mob in which the Senator was heavily affected.
“It is important to note that this gesture of the senator is not alien to some of us, because over the years, he has been reaching out to so many youths through scholarships, human capital training and development programs, Entrepreneurship skill acquisition, empowerment programs, etc. Fortunately, I was one among many others as beneficiaries of his scholarship scheme in 2010. Today, a good number of us are academic doctors.
“Judging from the recent development of the neighborhood football scheme, one can say boldly that the Distinguished Senator is a youth at heart.”
Former Councilor of Akparabong ward in Ikom Local Government Area (LGA), Hon Edo Owan Amba, while hailing the gesture of the ex-NDDC Board Chairman, remarked: “I am really impressed because it’s a way of giving back to the society especially to the neighbourhood youths who had themselves engaged for about one month. The gesture is one that united the entire neighbourhood who trooped into the arena evening after evening to watch and cheer their preferred teams.
“It’s also an avenue for talent discovery and I suggest an expansion of the scope of the competition to include government and private football scouts who I believe will discover talents they can develop.”
Hon Amba, a chairmanship aspirant for Ikom LGA on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC), however, observed that there was no adequate publicity for the tournament while it lasted. He urged the organisers to ensure that in subsequent editions sufficient provision is made for media coverage of the championship.
According to him, “A few people I spoke with about the tournament were shocked that despite the magnitude of the competition and proper coordination, the publicity was poor. They believe that such a well-organized football event should be adequately reported in the media.”
The Coordinator of the tournament, Hon Sunny Udeh, in an interview, noted that “The youths of the area received the Ndoma-Egba neighborhood football competition with great enthusiasm. They were eager to participate and formed themselves into various teams, using countries as the names of those teams. I think that it is a welcome development. However, from an organizational point of view, obviously, there is room for improvement. But basically it’s something that has been very interesting and worthwhile. There is the expectation that the tournament can throw up talents that will go on to make a profitable career out of football for themselves. And of course become very useful to not just the Asari Eso community but to Cross River State and Nigeria at large.”
Dwelling on the senator’s gesture, Udeh said: “I’m not surprised. He (Ndoma-Egba) is one who is constantly on the look-out for opportunities to make an impact in the society. It’s a good gesture. And I know he is willing to further improve even in the value of the sponsorship in order to give further improvement to the tournament itself. I know he is committed wholeheartedly to seeing it go beyond what the initial proposal envisaged.
“The general feeling of the people around the area in terms of the sponsorship of the tournament by Distinguished Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba has been that of gratitude. They are very appreciative of that gesture because beyond just sponsoring the tournament there are other initiatives that he has taken upon himself for the good of the community.
“As we speak he has provided access to potable water in and around the immediate environment. People could get portable water from around his residence open to the public. And then he has also not been waiting for the government waste evacuation team to come. Any time there is need to evacuate the waste in and around the neighbourhood, he has also personally taken that upon himself to sponsor and get that done. The neighbourhood vigilante group is sponsored by him. So those are some of the immediate community initiatives that he has been very much involved in. He is very open to anything that improves the quality of life of the people around him.”
On the observation made about poor publicity for the tournament, the Coordinator responded: “I agree with those who feel that something like this needs to be very well publicized. In fact, it’s one of the gaps that we have also identified. The coordination, the management, the organization is a team thing. It’s not just me. I just basically offer direction to the Local Organising Committee (LOC), a team of very committed and dedicated young people who have been pulling it off. And it’s basically peopled by the youths of the Asari Eso community.
“This is just the second edition, and as we do a postmortem, publicity is one of those things that we have noted as something that needs to be improved upon. There are a couple of other organizational lapses that we would be working on. For example, we also think that we will include individual awards into the prize giving event. We also think that it can be expanded from twelve teams to a sixteen-team tournament. The whole idea being to widen the scope of participation and create opportunity for many more people. There are quite a number of things that we think we need to bring on board as we plan for the 2024 edition of the tournament. When we put all of these together, we will sit down with the senator and agree on what needs to be taken and what we can defer.”
Michael Jegede, a journalist, writes from the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja
