Minister of Sports Development, Senator John Enoh has charged the Super Eagles of Nigeria to win their first match of the 2023 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Côte d’Ivoire.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports Senator Enoh gave the charge while stressing on the critical nature of the first match of the Super Eagles in Group A against Equatorial Guinea.
Super Eagles open their campaign against Equatorial Guinea on Sunday, followed by a mouth-watering clash with hosts Cote D’Ivoire on January 18, ending the group campaign with Guinea-Bissau on January 22.
Enoh stressed the Super Eagles encounter with Equatorial Guinea will go a long way to determine how the Nigerian national team will fare in the 2023 AFCON.
“It is very critical for the Super Eagles to win our first match on Sunday. The outcome will have a lot of implications,” Senator Enoh said during an interactive session with journalists, following a technical session with sports federation presidents in Abuja on Thursday.
Enoh added: “Every match in the tournament is as critical as the first encounter. It is a tournament. That first match is taking place on Sunday.
“I expect us to have a win. That win will send a clear signal as to our intentions, as to the reason why we are in Côte d’Ivoire, and to the fact that we are there to win”.
Speaking on the outcome of the meeting with sports federation presidents and secretaries, the Sports Minister disclosed that an agreement was reached to put together a technical team to develop funding models to proffer solutions to the challenge of funding for sports in the country.
“The funding issues have been there. When I say the problems of sports, which have been there for the past 30 years, are still the same problems we are talking about, all of them boil down to funding.
“If you look at the various sporting federations as they are, and the various funding needs, it is not sustainable for sports to depend fully on the government.
“One of the outcomes of the technical session is agreement to put together a technical team, comprising the sports federation presidents and the ministry to work for new funding models that are going to be sustainable.
“A lot of the sports are going to Egypt for the Olympics qualifiers. That is because Egypt is doing something right. The way we can achieve what Egypt is doing is first to achieve a sustainable funding model that gets us to get the sports problems solved,” Enoh said.