Nigeria Content Online

The 2011 edition of
the NNPC/Shell Cup for all secondary schools in the country will have
over 110,000 students participating in the nationwide championship.

This was disclosed
by the Secretary General of the Nigeria School Sports Federation,
Olabisi Joseph at a press conference held in Lagos to officially flag
off the championship. “110,000 students are expected to participate
from both the public and private schools from all over the country,” he
said. The All-Nigeria Secondary Schools Football Championship is in its
13th edition, under the sponsorship of the Shell Production Development
Company (SPDC) . The competition has a history of producing players for
both local club sides and for the national teams.

Players like Femi
Opabunmi, who took part in the 2000 edition from Oyo State went on to
represent Nigeria at the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea. Other
names like Promise Isaac, captain of the U-20 team that came second
behind Argentina at the FIFA U-20 World Cup that took place in Holland
in 2005, Chinedu Ogbuke, who recently represented Nigeria at the 2010
World Cup in South Africa, are some of the talents that were discovered
through the Shell Cup.

Theme of the championship

Sola Abulu, Head,
Major Projects, PR and Brand Communications said, “We want to restate
the theme of the tournament: That education and sports can go
hand-in-hand. We are proud, as always to renew our commitment to the
promotion of education and football, as this 13th edition kicks off.”
She added that “FIFA’s 2010 adoption of the ‘1-Goal Education for All’
project is a validation of the SPDC joint venture’s vision to use
football as a means to drive education. I dare say that the positive
energy around the NNPC/Shell Cup has the potential to make it more than
just a secondary school sports competition.” Abulu reiterated that SPDC
is committed to delivering a good competition and will commit finances
to that extent. She also added that the benefit of organising the event
(helping to discover new football talents) is their goal. “The prize
beyond the financial reward is the opportunity that will be given to
secondary school children from all over the country to exhibit their
football skills. Normally, most of these children may not have had the
opportunity to experience this and we are just happy that the
competition will allow children from all the nooks and crannies of
Nigeria to live their football dreams. That in itself is the intrinsic
reward.” Former Eagles captain, Segun Odegbami, the consultant of the
project from its inception added that, “Scrutiny of the ages of the
players will be more thorough than ever, starting from this edition.
This will be achieved in conjunction with the Sports Network Initiative
(SNI), to authenticate and document the data of all participants from
all over the country. SNI will provide all the logistics, software and
hardware to ensure that all players’ data are correctly captured from
all the centres.

Odegbami added
that, “So when these data have been captured, changes cannot be made
forever on basic information that has been captured. We want to make
sure that we produce more players for the U-17 teams.” The championship
is already in the registration stage where forms can be picked up by
any interested secondary school. The finals will be played in Lagos on
February 27, 2011.