Major General Abdullahi Maikano is a distinguished military officer and an advocate for the transformative power of sports in fostering unity, discipline and peace. He was the president of the Organization of Military Sports in Africa (OMSA), who played a leading role in the successful hosting of the 2nd African Military Games Abuja 2024 (AMGA2024). In this interview, he speaks on the aims of the Games which was to fostering unity.
How has OSMA ensured inclusivity and gender balance in the games?
I disagree with you that sports are seen as a male thing. If you said about 100 years ago that sports were biased toward gender, I can agree with you, but nowadays, sports encompass males and females, and that is what you can see here in our African Military Games. We have many female athletes competing in this game. We have zero barriers between males and females. We all call ourselves men of the service. These games also unite all genders for peace, unity, and understanding. There is no barrier at all.
Sir, how has the OSMA and AMGA 2024 collaboration impacted the Games?
When OSMA was created many years ago, we asked ourselves: What is our aim? Our aim is to bring the armed forces in Africa together. So, the question here is: How will we get the armed forces together? Is it by weapons? Is it by carrying arms? Is it by eating food? We said, “Let’s use sports to unite the armed forces.”
That gave rise to the African Military Games, where we could have as many sporting activities as possible so that all the African countries would come and participate; that is where the idea came from. So, if you want water, you start digging a well; what is your aim? It is to get water; even if you dig the well, you have to get something that can go and bring out the water, so for us to have unity, it is for us to bring all the armed forces together to play in the sports field. Then we can achieve unity; then we can achieve understanding, and we can also achieve collaboration.
After the first edition of the Games in Kenya about 22 years ago, Nigeria couldn’t host the game due to one challenge or another.
Given the magnitude of preparation seen in this game, what can you say were the improvements from the first edition?
The only improvement is modernization. Anything you did 20 years ago and you are doing this year must be an improvement and modernization. The Squadron system, the track system, the opening and closing ceremonies, and the musical interlude are some of the innovations we had; they were not there during the first edition.
We used electronic scoring in most of the sports. Transportation and feeding were better than 20 years ago.
