Police Games… the cops, here for good
ALL the cops are here! Saturday through first weekend of
March, Anambra State will be agog with all sorts of competitive sports, sports
stars, legends of the industry, super cops, guests and the most physically fit of police men and
women.
The cops will be
here for the 12th biennial edition of Nigeria Police Games (NPG) which kicks
off in Dr. Alex Ekwueme Square, Awka,
and holds at various locations across the state with a promise to make
it the best package of the games since its inception. Them e of this year’s
event is ‘Promoting Community Safety through Sports.’
Anambra, being the
first state of the South East zone to host the NPG aspires to offer the best
hospitality, spectacle, ambience and sports challenge in the history of the
games. The state also guns to have her name etched in history for being the
place where the country would discover a new crop of athletes and competitors
for her national and international sports meets in the new decade.
But most
importantly, the state sees the games as another platform of showcasing her
strong reputation for internal security whilst the cops would, obviously want
to be in Anambra for the meeting to express its very healthy relationship with
Ndi Anambra.
Over time,
especially, since the inception of the Gov. Willie M. Obiano administration in
March 17, 2014, Anambra State has openly supported and identified with security
agencies while establishing her keenness for the success of such agencies as
the Police in their duties of ensuring law and order and protecting the
citizenry.
Writing in his
article, ‘The 12th Police Games in Anambra State’, Anambra State’s Commissioner
for Information and Public Enlightenment, C.Don Adinuba establishes the essence
of the state playing host to the games.
“Why are the police
holding the 12th biennial games in Anambra State?” he retorted, and followed
with what could be the views of those who needed to be furnished with relevant
information.
Such blokes would
erroneously say: “After all, the state is reputed for excellence in fields like
education, agriculture, manufacturing, technology, security and
entrepreneurship but not sports.”
Forgetting, as
Adinuba observes, that “some of the best sportsmen and women ever from Nigeria
are Anambra indigenes. Take Mary Onyali, an Olympic medalist. Take Innocent
Ejima Egbunike, another Olympic medalist. Or Major Emmanuel Ifeajuna, the first
Nigerian to win a medal at the Commonwealth Games.
How about Emmanuel Okala, Nigeria’s greatest goalkeeper? Or
Power Mike Okpala, the undefeated world heavyweight wrestling champion? Who can
ever forget Ben Lionheart Okpala, the African heavyweight wrestling champion?
Or Ngozika Ekwelum, the national boxing champion? No one can forget that Christ
the King College, Onitsha, made history in 1977 when it became the first
secondary school in Africa to win the World Secondary School Football
Competition held in Ireland.”
More so, the issues
around the state’s hosting of the NPG go
beyond seeking to establish the state’s legacy of hospitality, pushing to
discover sports legend and ensuring that people of current generation do not
forget a history of great sports acts which Anambra has had from the early years of Nigeria.
In ‘The 12th Police
Games in Anambra State’, Chief Adi nuba
pressed the matter thusly: “even if Anambra State did not have a longstanding
robust record in sports, the police authorities would have gone out of their
way to make the state government a partner in the 12th Biennial Police Games by
hosting the games. The reason is simple: the Nigeria Police Force cannot
possibly ask for a better partner in preventing and fighting crime than the
present Governor Willie Obiano administration. The police will remain grateful
to Governor Obiano for many years to come.”
So the Police surely
have a friend in Anambra State and the state has their buddy among the cops.
Aside relationship and hosting goals, Anambra State, by the games, is contributing her
quota, remarkably in boosting the nation’s
law enforcement efforts. Well before Nigeria’s independence, the staging
of regular sports contest among officers and men of the Police have been a
regular beat and veritable means of improving policing services while also
boosting sports in Nigeria.
Hence when, in 2017,
then Nigeria’s Minister of Sports, Solomon Dalung said: “We (Nigeria) have
always relied on the Nigerian Police to produce athletes for international
competitions,” he was on point. Records show that in the 1950s and even 1960s
the police was called the Pillar of Nigeria’s sports as almost all national
team were made up mostly of cop sportsmen.
Additionally, police
games helps the nation breed in the Police Service the philosophy of hard work
and play in equal measure while also raising healthy men and women who would
have wonderful and rewarding careers.
With activities such as the police sport, cops from all over
the nation would have marvellous opportunities for friendship, good health,
physical fitness, personal satisfaction and confidence, which, no doubt is very
crucial in the very challenging and risky profession.
History establishes that the activities that culminated to
what we have currently as NPG began as early as the mid-1940s. In United
Kingdom, it began immediately after the First World War.
Nigeria’s story of Police Games is traced back to the
recruitment of 30 able-bodied men into the Consular Guard of the colonial era.
For their recruitment, they had to undergo fitness tests through such
activities as running and jumping. But as the Anambra Police Command’s Public
Relations Officer, Mohammed Haruna (SP), in an interview he granted Nkechi
Ikenwoke of this newspaper (National Light), explained: “it was in 1946 that
the actual Police sporting competition began at the Obalende Police ground in
the then Lagos Colony when CP W.C. King, the Inspector-General of Police
between 1942 and 1947 staged the first Police Athletics Championship.” The said
contest was for police athletes from the Provinces in the regions and Lagos
colony. Men’s track and field athletic events were the main objective.
The Obalende ground
hosted the challenges regularly “until 1954 when the venue was moved to the
Southern Police College in Ikeja. Thus, making Ikeja the meeting point for all
police athletes from the West, East, North and the Mid- West regions.
“At the Provinces in
the regions, inter Provincial competitions were held to produce teams that were
to represent the region at the Police
College in Ikeja.
“At the Southern
Police College, Ikeja, the championship changed from what used to be track and
field alone to a wider scope with other events like football, hockey,
basketball, cross country and many more included in the programme. It was a
yearly event in which trophies were donated by senior officers for the winning
teams and individuals in each event.”
In 1977, the yearly
competition moved out of Lagos for the first time as Kaduna hosted it. NPG
eventually became a biennial event in 1986, when Bauchi hosted it. But there
was a hiatus between 2002 through 2006 after Kwara and Cross River had played.
In 2008, under the reign of Sir Mike Okiro
as Inspector-General of Police (IGP), the games was ressurcitated with
Lagos as host.
Rivers State hosted
an eventful edition in 2013 during the reign of IGP M.D. Abubakar. This 2020 edition of NPG holding under the
regime of a very meticulous and brilliant supper cop, IGP Mohammed Abubakar
Adamu,a man who had never hidden his
admiration of Anambra State, holds promises of a rich and memorable outing.
Among my
expectations in the Awka meet is the healthy rivalry between the Lagos/Ogun
axis (Zone 2) and Zone 6, Calabar. This is also an opportunity for the Umuahia
Zone (in which Anambra Command belongs) to prove her mettle in the medals’
table after the competitions in football, track and field athletics, swimming,
cycling, indoor games, shooting among others.
Given that the Tokyo
2020 Olympics will begin in July and the National Sports Festival kicks off in
Edo State next month, I count myself and most people living in Anambra within
this period, very lucky for being around. It will be a big previledge and rare
witness of history for one to behold some the Olympians and stars of the
National Sports Festival, live.
Ndi Anambra are actually lucky to have this at
this auspicious period. The NPG and its attendant improvement of sporting
facilities across the state will, definitely improve sports here for a long
time to come. Youth of the state are surely, the biggest beneficiaries here.
Four centres , spread across senatorial zones in the state will hosts beats in
the competition.
Even those in entertainment and the business of memontoes
are in good opportunity too. Like anyone who had sovenirs or memoirs of
Nigeria’s first Olympic gold medallist, ACP Chioma Ajunwa; the World
heavyweight boxing star, DSP Samuel
Peter (aka The Nigerian Nightmare), the late SP Sunday Badah (also an
Olympic gold medallist)among others when they were NPG sportsmen can get an
edge with them, those who meet the stars in town from this weekend may be
happening into history.
Surely, the cops are
here for good.
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