By Adewale Ajayi

Sports as a component of educational attainment was highlighted recently in Warri, Delta State following the construction and commissioning of a volleyball and handball courts donated to the Hussey College.

It was glitz and glamour, excitement and camaraderie as the Olu of Warri, His Royal Majesty, Ogiame Atuwatse 111, led a pack of eminent personalities to the official commissioning of ultra-modern Volleyball and Handball courts donated to Hussey College, Warri by Brownhill Foundation, a Non-Governmental Organisation in Delta State.

The Foundation is the brainchild of an old student of the school, Mr Amaju Melvin Pinnick, the immediate past two-tenure President of the Nigeria Football Federation and a serving member of the FIFA Council.

Heralding the arrival of the Olu of Warri at the ceremony were traditional dances, in an atmosphere of pomp and pageantry, with the aroma of royalty radiating at the proceedings of the day.

The commissioning ceremony was a gathering of the “who-is-who” in the academia, politics, business and government. The national anthem, that of the Itsekiri ethnic extraction and Hussey College, as rendered, brought back nostalgic feelings of our existence as a people bound with one destiny.

The National President of Hussey college Old Students Association, Elder Emmanuel Ogidi, in his speech, said he is challenged by this donation of sports infrastructure by Brownhill Foundation, with Amaju Melvin Pinnick as founder.

Elder Ogidi, who is also the National Vice Chairman of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP said further “Even when some of us have influenced projects to Hussey College, Warri in times past by virtue of the positions we have occupied in Government, none of us have done anything in our individual capacities as Amaju Pinnick is doing “.

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The Olu of Warri, in his brief remarks, stunned the august audience, by going down memory lane to reveal that his biological father, a late Olu of Warri was an alumnus of Hussey college, who wanted him to attend the college, but which was not to be, by a twist of fate.

While commending Mr Pinnick and his Brownhill Foundation Group for giving back to the society, the highly reverred monarch called on other alumni of the school to emulate the kind gesture.

The monarch believed that there are other old students of Hussey College out there, who might be wealthier than Pinnick, but in his words:”this young man has just decided to etch his name in gold and in the sands of time.”