SAN FRANCISCO October 05, (THEWILL) – The Nigerian Army has revealed that it is organizing this year’s Nigerian Army Sports Festival in Abuja next week, after a period of about eight years of shelving the event.
Chief of Army Staff, Lt. General Tukur Buratai, made the disclosure on Wednesday as he reiterated that the Army has defeated Boko Haram noting that what was presently happening in the epicentre of the battle were minor skirmishes by the failing group to gain relevance.
“We have more than degraded the Boko Haram. I want to say this is the beginning of the celebration of the victory of the Armed Forces especially the Nigerian army on the defeat of the Boko Haram,” he said.
“We have started the process of celebrating our victory over the Boko Haram”.
“1760 athletes of the Nigerian Army from various divisions will compete in 19 events including traditional military sports like Combat Relay, Obstacle sports, Tug of war, boxing, cross country and others.
“For the Southern part of the country, Buratai said the Army will be introducing swimming and other riverine sports because of the peculiarity of the region and that a test case scenario will be kick-started which will be built upon in future.
“However, divisions 7 and 8 of the army are being excluded from the week-long festival
“Since the creation of 7 division, it was created within the conflict period, they have been in the theatre of operation; have not been in peace time period to exercise for the event. It would also be a distraction to pull them out.
“For 8 division, it is about three or four months old. It has been deeply involved in the operation. We want to give them time to really concentrate in the fight against Boko Haram in the North East. Give them time to completely dominate the area.
“Yes we are fighting but it will not prevent us from carrying out other professional engagement that would even make us to fight better; and to develop physical capacity to fight better.
“Like I said, this is the beginning of the celebration of the Armed Forces, particularly the Army on the engagement with Boko Haram. We have started celebrating the defeat of the Boko Haram.
“We last held a sporting festival of such nature in 2009 and now we are reviving it.
“Just like football where we have qualified for the nationwide league, we are reviving Boxing, Cross Country, Long Distance and Marathon. The army boxing team in April won the Lagos State boxing championship. Our boxers also went to Kazakhstan and did very well.
Emphasizing that
“The sports festivals of the army is part of the training schedule of personnel since physical fitness and development is critical to the mental wellbeing of officers and the event is meant to promote the spirit of espiri de corp among personnel and to foster relationship between the army and civil populace.
“To encourage national records to be broken, anybody that won gold medals, shatters existing records, is due to earn certain privileges including promotion, special recommendation among others.”
