Rose Ejembi, Makurdi
All is now set for the second edition of the 32km Tito Marathon Road Race, which is billed to take place in February 2020 in Makurdi, Benue State.
According to the organiser of the event and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tito Group of Companies, Chief Isaac Akinkunmi this year’s event promises to be more explosive and more attractive with more quality prizes to be won by participants, whom he noted would be drawn from Nigeria and other African countries.
Akinkunmi, who disclosed this at a press conference at the weekend said his company had put adequate machinery in motion to make this year’s second edition of the marathon road race bigger and better than the first edition, which was held in February last year.
Akinkunmi explained further that part of activities lined up for this year’s edition is organising kids between the ages of four to 12 years into teams to groom them, as well as to teach them the basics of soccer on or before the day of the marathon race.
He said the company was also looking forward to instituting soccer draws for kids where they can be camped during holidays and trained on the basics of soccer, as a way of giving back to its host community in line with its corporate social responsibility.
“We discovered that most of our players just get to limelight by chance, hence there is no conscious effort to pick them when they are still young. So, along the line as they grow, we lose talents because they are never exposed to soccer.
“Again you can see that our cities are not configured in such a way that it allows each area to have football pitches or parks that allows children to just move to one park and play. Our cities are not configured that way which is of course a very terrible thing.
“This is a challenge to our town planners, that when you are planning a town, you should make provision for parks where kids can develop their physical talents. Athletic prowess can be developed from childhood not by chance playing on the streets”, Chief Akinkumi stated.
Recalled that the maiden edition of the Tito Makurdi Marathon Road Race, which attracted participants from Benue, Abuja, Kaduna, Nasarawa, Plateau and Taraba states was flagged off by the Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom on January 20, 2019.