By Bethel Kalu
The Abia State Government has promised to ensure that Enyimba FC and other sporting teams in the state get the desired support they need. This was made known by the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Youth and Sports, Chinedu Ekeke, shortly after the Governor hosted Enyimba FC at the Government House in Umuahia.
Ekeke said the Government will support Enyimba’s ambitions and ensure that they keep their winning culture
“The plan is to ensure that we keep winning. Already the club has a culture and a history of winning. We are going to have a Government that is interested in the tiniest of details of what goes on in the club. We are going to give them all the support, maximum support to ensure that what we witnessed today keeps happening. If it does not happen every year, it will happen every other day.”
He also spoke about the payment of salaries and allowances of the players
“For us, those are sacrosanct issues. The Governor said that the labourer is deserving of his wages. It was actually shocking that these boys were owed three months salaries and match bonuses and then they still went out of their way to win. We are not going to owe them. We will continue to pay them. We will continue to support them. It was not up to three days that we were inaugurated and we were informed of their situation and we raised money and then within one week, we raised another money and that was actually on the day of the final match. We will support them in anyway possible.
We are going to pay attention to sports generally. We are also going to start building strength in other areas. For instance, I am not sure we are doing very well in basketball, we are going to look into that area. We are going to pick three to five sports and push them as hard as we are pushing football. We should be able to do well in other sports areas and what that means is that people who are not talented in football can be talented in other areas. So we are going to harness those talents in other sporting activities.”
On assumption of office, the Governor dissolved boards of parastatals, which also affected the leadership of Enyimba FC. In his speech at the reception of the title-winning Enyimba FC, the Governor referred to Dr. Anyansi Agwu as the “immediate past chairman,” a tag that raised eyebrows. Reacting to that, Mr Ekeke diffused the tension surrounding that statement
“For the chairman of Enyimba, you are aware that the Government dissolved boards of parastatals. So for every parastatal you are talking about anybody in the board, you will be talking about that person in the past, not that they are dead but that they used to be members of the board. That was the context of that speech. A board has been dissolved, so all the members of that board were once members of that board.”