Sport  |  Football  

Barca Academy boss picks sports development, peace as tools for world unity

By Adaku Onyenucheya |   13 April 2020   |   2:14 am  


Nigerians joined the world last week to celebrate the United Nations’ International Day of Sports for Development and Peace, which #BeActive campaign is aimed at helping in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the event in Lagos, many stakeholders commended the proactive and smart approach of various sports associations and bodies across the world to tame the recent global health challenge, while calling on individuals, organisations and government to look inward, drive innovation, create enabling and supporting technological environment that will ginger effective development and endurable peace, believe to be the bond of love and unity of the entire human community.

Speaking during a stakeholders’ teleconference, Leslie Oghomienor, promoter of the elite Barca Academy Group Nigeria, said countries with high GDPs and viable economic indices were nations with high education, health and development index. He added that the national leadership has shown that, as a nation, Nigeria has the capacity to excel in all aspects of human endeavour.

“For us in our organisation, we are driven by innovation that swings on the hinges of true human charity and spirit, grassroots sports development and youth development and re-orientation. “Our sustaining mantra is, ‘we excellently can,’ and with the help of God and you all our esteemed stakeholders, we try to be the best we can.

“The Barca Academy is sending to our children some home exercises to do during this period. And we appeal to parents to support them during this off the field break and beyond because the trends has shown that, sports is a good engineer for development, peace and unity,” Oghomienor said.

He revealed that the break would give parents the opportunity to be fully involved in the academics, sport exercises, training and the upbringing of their children, saying, “checking the children’s academic work, encouraging and helping them during their exercise periods, paying attention to their interests and sharing in their challenges, where there is any, will help in their total development.”

“We are not going for our annual Barca Academy World tournament, which our children won a trophy in the last outing. We are very well prepared and looking forward to winning more laurels.

“In the Barca Academy worldwide, children are taught to see themselves as one family. Thus, every child in the system knows that playing a game is not all about winning, and so is the human life…” he explained.

He stressed the importance of all stakeholders to pay attention to government’s directives, and continue to work assiduously in their own little way to bring health, development and peace to the world in the soonest possible time.

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