The minister of women affairs and social development, Dame Pauline Tallen, has presented an award of excellence to the Association of Former Female Athletes of Nigeria (AFFAN).
The minister presented the award in Abuja on Wednesday at a stakeholders engagement and policy dialogue dinner in collaboration with the Research and Project Center.
The national president of AFFAN, Dr. Esther Aluko, received the award on behalf of the association.
Speaking to newsmen after receiving the award, Dr Aloku expressed delight, saying it is a thing of joy.
“I am so excited and short of words. It means when you are working so hard, someone is watching you. It is a thing of joy to be honoured in this way and we really want to thank the Honourable Minister of Women Affairs for this recognition of AFFAN,” she said.
Answering questions on the association’s line up of programmes for Nigerians especially at the grassroot, Dr. Aluko said AFFAN is currently working towards getting athletes to Asaba, Delta State to serve as a frontier to development of netball in Nigeria.
“We constructed the first netball court in the FCT. We organised the first netball competition in FCT and some of our members are part of the Nigerian Netball Federation and the Council of Sports have successfully proven netball to be a social sport during the festival. We have teams that are preparing right now that will go for demonstration sport,” AFFAN boss stated.
The vice president of the association, Air Commodore Rahinatu Garba (rtd), added that AFFAN is set to give back to the society and impart in the younger athletes to be role models.
“Netball was played in Nigeria in the seventies after basketball’s introduction in the country. We took it upon ourselves as athletes to commit our resources, time and everything to get at least two teams of netballers and we have been training them for the past six months until about a month ago that we stopped training them. But, I can assure you that in the next two to three weeks, we’ll start training, after getting all the logistics required to keep them in camp for the forthcoming sports festival. We’re happy that we’ve been recognised to take this challenge and we’re going to give our best and we will make sure that netball is back in Nigeria.” Air Commodore Garba said.
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