Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Christopher Musa, has attributed Team Nigeria Armed Forces impressive feat, winning the second African Military Games which ended yesterday in Abuja with 114 gold, 64 silver and 53 bronze, totalling 231 medals to discipline and hard work.
He said since Nigeria was given the mandate to host the games, the Armed Forces athletes and officials had been training very hard to achieve the set goal of “host and win.”
The CDS said the impressive performance of the athletes at AMGA 2024 was part of the moral components of the Nigerian Military.
He said, “As we were conducting this Games and winning medals, those of our officers in the trenches, in joggles, were listening to the news and hearing our victory, it helps boost their morale and want to do more because they have seen their athletes also doing well.
“The good thing about the military is that we are so organised that we have different specialisms that we have those of them into sports, fight, signal, engineering, medical, mechanical and so on. All of them can operate under the same body.
“Nobody is distracted, but focus and we remain in doing that. Of course, we were able to showcase Nigeria to the outside world and prove to everyone that Nigeria is safe,” he said.
General Musa stated further that the Nigeria Armed Forces have also used the Games to project the country positively to the rest of Africa and the world.
“I’m sure you saw a video about a Ugandan man that went viral. He went round Abuja and was lamenting that he was told Abuja is dangerous, that there are a lot of criminals and everything is happening in Nigeria, only to see how that Abuja is so peaceful, clean, organised and this is an African country led by Africans and he was amazed, this is it.
“Before they came here, some of them were informed wrongly because if you listen to international media, it is like Nigeria is a war zone but they came and saw something different. The level of organisation as our legend here mentioned has been wonderful, within a short period we were able to put this together.”
He, however, appealed to the National Sports Commission (NSC) to ensure that the sports facilities that were revived with the hosting of AMGA 2024 are maintained to enhance sports development in the country.
“Our prayers are that the facilities that we are able to revive should be sustained and maintained. Frankly speaking, as an individual, I never knew how large, massive the Abuja Stadium was until I went round to see that we have a car park that could take up to 5,000 vehicles, we have so many places that we don’t know about, but it is important we put them into good use.
He assured that the talents discovered during the Games would be put together to form defence sports.
“For our sportsmen and women, this is just the beginning because like I said earlier, overtime we stopped organising this kind of event but those of them that have taken part here, we will put them together to form our defence sports organisation, working with all sports federations. The federations have seen what has happened in this game and taken notes of those that have performed remarkably well,” he said.
Meanwhile, on the overall medal of the Games, Team Algeria finished second with cumulative medals of 95, comprising 52 gold, 22 silver, 21 bronze.
Team Kenya placed third with 20 gold, 16 silver and 12 bronze, totalling 48 medals. Ghana finished fourth with a total medals of 36, comprising seven gold, 14 silver and 15 bronze medals, while Ethiopia completed the top five on the medal table with 16 medals of six gold, eight silver and two bronze.
