Navy To Float Footbal Team In Nigeria League, Says FOC

By Our Reporter

The Nigeria Navy authorities has concluded plans to float a football team to compete in federation league.

The Flag Officer Commanding (FOC) Eastern Naval Command, Olusola Oluwagbire, made this known at the opening ceremony of the maiden edition of FOC Eastern Naval Command Intra-Command football competition in Calabar on Friday.

The FOC said the essence of the competition is to re-engineer the physical fitness and inspire a sense of comradeship on the personnel.

"The plan of this competition was to bring together officers, civilian staff and corp members with us together to re-engineer their physical fitness.

"It is also aimed at strengthening the relationship among the personnel and also to maintain their mental alertness.

"It has been long in coming and we are thankful that we finally got it off today," he stated.

Oluwagbire promised to sustain the competition.

At the event, the Speaker of the Cross River House of Assembly, Elvert Ayambem, represented by Davis Eta, Deputy Leader of the House, said plans are also on by present administration of the state to revive sports.

According to him, "football is a game that unit people, a game of love and I can see the love on the pitch, I can see the unity also.

"As for we in Cross River, we are poise to revive sports in the state. Sports brought us national and international recognition but somewhere along the line, things went bad.

"We (Legislature) will work with the executive to revive sports in the state."

During the inaugural match, the headquarters team defeated NNS Jubilee from Akwa Ibom 1-2.

The winner of the trophy would go home with a cash prize of N500,000, N300,000 and N200,000 for the first, second and third place respectively.