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By the time you are reading this, the final event at the 2nd African Military Games will be taking place. Soldier-athletes from the over-20 African countries that finally participated will be preparing to return home after the closing ceremonies this Saturday that will bring down the curtains on a very successful AMGA 2024.
When the games began on November 18, 2024, only few could have envisaged the level of success it finally attained.
It has been 22 years since the first Games were held, indicating the challenges inherent with hosting. It is not a stroll in the park. It takes courage, resources, determination, commitment and a clear vision.
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Since COJA in 2003, the concept of hosting any such continental events is greeted with a stonewall of objections. COJA 2003 was a disaster, the story of squander-mania and financial brigandage, obscene scandals and blatant recklessness, all unmatched in Nigerian sports history.
It is the story of how some persons enriched themselves and impoverished sports and sports development. Their misadventure left carcasses everywhere. The Games Village was sold to cronies, not sports heroes that needed and deserved it. The stadium complex became a shameful White-elephant project that should have been a national monument in the heart of one of the the most idyllic and beautiful capital cities in Africa, but became a dead zone, a beautiful flower idling and wasting away in a desert place.
The entire shenanigans of COJA confronts Nigerians every time they drive into the city of Abuja from the airport – an accursed edifice that could have been the City’s number One tourist destination, a social, cultural, business and entertainment hub that will not sleep 27 hours every day and 8 days a week, but is rather under the spell and stranglehold of an ugly, cursed past.
This week, there are signs that things may be about to change. At least the opportunity is here now, presented by the seeds of AMGA 2024.
He surely did not set out to be a Hero of AMGA 2024, but circumstances have now thrown him up as the champion of a new dawn in the checkered story of Nigerian Sports. The story of the MKO Abiola National Stadium, Abuja, may be changed through the man’s singular decision to dare where angels fear, to host the military Games at the MKO Abiola National Stadium.
General Christopher Gwabin Musa, OFR, the Chief of Defense Staff of the Nigerian Armed Forces must have seen what few others did not in choosing to undertake what no one had dared to do in 2 decades. His being a product of a well-established sports tradition and grounded in basketball and volleyball as a national player, must played a big role in his courage to host the African Military Olympics in Abuja at a period that several regional and even continental security crisis are everywhere.
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He may not have anticipated it, but the success of the Games is resounding. AMGA 2024 was a superb management of little resources, prudent management and great organization.
The product is a first class event with many take-aways for sports development into the future in Nigeria. To have organised at all at the national stadium confirms the saying that in sport ‘impossible is nothing. Once you can dream it and believe it, you can achieve it’.
AMGA 2024 is a testament to the vision, courage and hard work of the military leadership under General Christopher Musa. With the support of the Minister of the Federal Capital City, the host city, within two months the damaged facilities and basic utilities in one of the most modern and most stadiums in Africa were restored for usage. It is a miracle!
No one could have envisioned the final outcome of the games. Here we are after 12 days of AMGA 2024. The verdict is here for all to see. There is physical and spiritual revival of the MKO Abiola Stadium with the success of the Games.
Two weeks of sports action has fired the imagination into a new possibility, and brought life back to sports in the military, to the place of the military in Nigerian sports architecture, to the fate of the national stadium, and to rekindling of hope for sports development.
I commend the leadership of the Nigerian Military under General Christopher Musa.
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The organization of the Games was almost flawless, a clear demonstration of the invaluable traditions of the military in sports organization and development.
Has AMGA 2024 been a perfect Games? Far from it, but it was close to it in the harvest of the envisaged dividends for hosting it.
The federal government must now take lessons from it, examine what the military authorities did right, borrow from it, consider very quickly what to do in the short term to sustain the traffic of the public into the sports complex, and open up the beauty and viability of the environment to private sector investors in leisure, culture, entertainment and the arts.
I join all Nigerians in celebrating the success of AMGA 2024, and in congratulating the Chief of Defense Staff, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, the Chairman of the Local Organising Committee and his team of officials, the entire Nigerian military for presenting Africa with a ‘Games’ that has all-round ‘success’ written all over it.
Thank you General Christopher Gwabin Musa OFR.
