After a three year hiatus, the prestigious Federation of International Development Agencies Football (FIDAF) tournament returns today 12th November 2022 with 7 teams vying for honours in eight major cup and medals titles.
The tournament is a biennial event for development partners, though it was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic break, but the game returns and have steadily grown in prestige and coveted by participating development partners. FIDAF 2022 features games like Football, Basketball, Table tennis, Badminton, Relay Race, Volleyball, Chess, and Scrabble.
SpyeTV News reports that former Super Eagles Captain and Coach, Mr Augustine Owen Eguavoen, and an ex- international Footballer and Olympic Gold Medalist, Emmanuel Hyacinth Babayaro were special guests at the flag-off ceremony held on Saturday 12th November 2022 at Aguiyi Ironsi Cantonment Military Base Asokoro, Abuja.
Speaking at the flag-off ceremony, the Special Guest of Honour, former Super Eagles Captain and Coach, Mr Austin Egwavoen said, the power of football unifies people, and bringing people together, provides an opportunity to speak to people to get to network and NGOs coming together to slug it out among themselves is commendable.
"Its a very good thing you know the organisers have to be given thumbs up to start with, the health aspect of sport is very important and i am happy to be a part of this as special guests flagged the tournament off.
"Ultimately, we all know what non-government organisation stands for and how they impact people positively a whole lot of knowledge and reaching out to people make life easier and better for people through sport", he said.
Also an ex- international Footballer and Olympic Gold Medalist, Emmanuel Hyacinth Babayaro said the tournament is very close to his heart as he is a pioneer and a lifelong ambassador of FIDAF, and he is always promoting it and making sure things work out.
"I mean at the end of the day, these are people these are frontliners at the frontline of developing and promoting humanity. So whatever it takes to support them, apart from the fact that this also is also an important avenue for promoting health related issues, Wellness in a physical fitness, its also pays for coordination and connectivity,
Speaking on Nigeria Football Federation, Babayaro said, "for some time now I will say we've not been happy cause it's it's been on the down downward trend, but we're trying to revive it. You know, there's been an election in the Football Federation in recent times". He assured that humanitarian like himself at the frontline will try to make things work as everything to do with humanity.
Babayaro also commended the Super Falcons for making Nigeria proud in all games, noting that women has always been at the frontline of every developmental indices around the world, in education, health, sport, and politics.
He said, Nigeria is probably if not the first, among the very first countries in Africa that embraced female football. So where, where, where, where way ahead. In fact it's not really been to Rosie cause things are not being done.
He opined that the way it should be by now, the Super Falcons should be competing to win the World Cup. And it's not yet to rule, so we're still there working, calculating and coming up with those calculative measures that will make them get better.
Earlier in her opening remarks, the organiser of Federation of International Development Agencies Football (FIDAF) tournament, Mrs Grace Uwadia, said there is no tournament that is for the international NGO sector and the tournament began in 2011 which is for employees of the international NGO Sector to enable team bonding and Work Life Balance.
"You know, we work so hard and then we have little or no time to takeover health. You know as a worker you don't think sports, all you think about is yearning at the end of each month. You know you have little time to take care of your health so sports is also expected to be promoted for leisure, which is why FIDAF is promoting sports for leisure both for ladies and four men.And that's the idea.
She stressed that FIDAF tournament 8 days of fun was put in place to encourage team bonding, opportunity for also exercise and then network. "We started with about 22 organisations and because of Covid -19 we were not able to have this in three years. That's why you just have this number of seven teams in this year's tournaments and we actually looking forward to having FIDAR Africa mergers fail of Nigeria because in the development sector there is nothing like this. This is the first of its kind in the entire world.
The long week event which kicked start today Nov 12 will end 18th November 2022.
FIDAF is an acronym for Federation of International Development Agencies Football. It is a non-profit oriented initiative intended to foster camaraderie amongst International Development Agencies (IDAs) and also to provide a forum for interaction both within themselves (the IDAs) and with their clients, prospective clients, and support organizations.