Tony Pemu, managing director of Ideal Plus Limited also dubbed as the consultant in charge of the rebranded National Principal Cup has revealed the extent of precautionary measures in safeguarding participants, fans, ambassadors, and everyone who will grace the upcoming principal cup game while also stating significance upheaval to the competition amidst private sector intervention, sports247.ng gathered.
Answering fielded interview questions from journalists at the Agege Soccer Temple, the venue for the opening ceremony, Tony stated the need for a medical consultant so that it can help to ensure that every procedure to keep safe are in place and not only that, the COVID-19 even, of course, the health issues and all.
“We decided to come with the consultant so he will sure not to leave out anything because if we decide to leave that upon ourselves, of course, the federal ministry of youths and sports has a guideline in the document even though we have that, we have also decided to consult that aspect out to someone who knows more and he’s going to help us and am sure that by March, we will understand that as we have to go extra miles to ensure that we leave no stone unturned.”
“We are aware of the new wave of COVID-19 and we want to be sure that nobody is going to come here and contact the disease. Also going to ensure that we have enough masks, hand wash sanitizer we are going to be sharing on that day to everyone who will be around, so much we are going to put in place, and am sure that will work, we have no fear.”
“Also, we have decided to have a shift because we needed to perfect our plans, we have people coming all the way from Kaduna, the Government college student. We want to be sure that they are very comfortable. We have a new date now which is on the 26th of February. So we are expecting the visitors to come here on the 25th, so we are going to be having them very comfortable and will have a training session to feel the turf.”
“So by 26th when they are playing, they will be acclimatized to the turf so we are now going to look at sorting out their accommodation so that when they come, they have no issue, play their game and we all be happy and go back safe.”
On the venue for the matches, he allayed that It is school sports, so Agege won’t be hosting all the entire games and schools will be hosting a lot of games, schools with the functioning field as the competition will also help a lot of schools to upgrade their facilities, the competition will help people to look into those who didn’t have and begin to provide sporting facilities for their schools.
“We are going to be using more of the school, it is important matches from quarter-finals, semi-finals that we will be looking at the stadium to be staged and I can assure you that for the regular preliminary and zones at the state level will be played at various schools.”
On various sporting programs, “first I like you to also know that we are not doing football alone, we are running about five various sports in this next edition, table tennis, lawn tennis, badminton, track and field which is athletics, boxing and of course football. We have tried as much as possible to ensure that these students are inspired by picking Mary Onyali, she’s not a footballer but one of our ambassadors. She is going to be handling and mentoring those who are interested in athletics. We are getting people who have excelled in various sports to come around and encourage these young ones.”
“They are so many as we are also going to be diving into the development of student who are interested in coaching, running commentaries, sports analyst and sportswriters, videographer, photography, and everything associated with sports so we are not going to be developing the athletes alone but a lot more than that and bringing those that will mentor them not forgetting also that we are also packaging international training online for a lot of these ones. Once we do the training online and then during the course of the game, they are going to be put into practice that which they have learned online.”
“You can imagine that the school is marching out, players are coming out and then asks officials on the bench and they see the school coach doing what he’s supposed to do, he’s learning by that after doing the training online by international coaches, so we are doing a lot to ensure that we create the impact that we intended.”
On the continuity of the principal cup, he stated that this is one of the major reason that the private sector is driving it, it died before because it was left for the government alone to run and when policies shifted from other aspects of education into academics only, into how much of academic you know, that killed that aspect, “I don’t want to go into all that. Now we are coming in as the private sector to get the funding from the private sector and most of the private sector who are coming in as brand sponsors are signing up for quite a number of years to be renewed every five, three years yearly. So this policy is automatic on how to get better and better and grow every year.”
“As soon as we are done with the principal cup now, we are starting the headmaster cup, the same brands are all coming up so if the brands are coming and they all have three to five years term of the agreement with us, you will agree with me that we actually going to build a reputation from it which we believe will outlive us that our children or generation coming after us will wonder what was going through our mind when we were setting this up, that’s what we intend to drive, we are not stopping here, we want to do the continental principal cup before we begin to develop the global part of it. So we have where we are going, there’s nothing, we are planning right now and building a solid foundation where generations after us will begin to build upon to see how it last forever,” Tony Pemu assured.
