President Muhammadu Buhari will declare the 2020 National Sports Festival in Edo State open on March 22.
Edo State Deputy Governor, Philip Shaibu, made the disclosure, yesterday, in Benin City, after inspecting facilities at venues for the national sporting event.
“We have put everything in place for an unprecedented National Sports Festival. I’m happy to inform you that the President will declare the Games open on March 22, while Vice President Yemi Osinbajo will declare the event closed,” Shaibu said.
Shaibu said the state is working hard towards ensuring that Edo 2020 is the best Games ever in the history of the NSF, which was first held at the National Stadium, Lagos, in 1973.
“We are going to have about 17 centres where the events will take place because, like we’ve always said, we want to redefine how the Games are being hosted, so that at the end of the day, Edo will be a reference point. For us, Edo is the home of sports,” Shaibu added.
The deputy governor, an acclaimed footballer on the domestic scene, who featured for Insurance FC, said Edo is hosting to win the competition, adding that their athletes have been given the necessary exposure and training to bring glory to the state.
“We are hosting to win and win clean,” he said.
“We started work since we got the nod to host the festival; our athletes have been going for all the national games. We’ve exposed them to compete with majority of the athletes they would meet at Edo 2020. We also ensured that they competed recently in Akure (Allcomers Track and Field competition), with most of the athletes who would be going for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
We’ve given them the necessary exposure.