By Amaechi Agbo

The revitalised Notational Principal’s Cup will kick-off at state level on Monday, Today, March 8, 2021, the federal government has said.

The federal government through the ministry of Youth and Sports Development disclosed this over the weekend noting that the National Principal’s Cup at the state level will kick-off on Monday, March 8 and ends on Friday, March 12, 2021.

The Director, Grassroots Sports Development at the sports ministry Ademola Are, who stated this in an interview with Bestchoicesports.com.ng, said that champions of different sports from the states will play against themselves at zonal qualifiers before moving to Abuja for finals.

The finals in Abuja is scheduled to take place between 1st to 5th April.

 “The state finals will be starting on the 8th of March and will end on the 12th of March and the winners at that level will move to the zonal finals. And at the zonal finals, we are expecting one team to qualify for table tennis and athletics.

“In athletics, we are having 12 events male and female, football is male, table tennis is male and female, so, we expect the champions to move to the zonal finals from there the winner at the zones will now move to Abuja, the zonal finals will happen between 18th March to 22nd March while the finals in Abuja will be 1st to 5th of April.

Dr Are added that the federal government is working assiduously to get prizes for the athletes as well as scholarships with discussions ongoing at various stages with corporate bodies in this regard   

“We are looking forward to getting huge prizes from people that have promised us. For instance, Jack motors has promised us motors, we are looking forward to that. Access is also promising us, we are yet to receive them but we are very hopeful for the interest shown by these two major companies. We are still talking to others and we sincerely hope we will get there.

“Apart from this we want to be sure that we identify talents at the various level of competition who will now be exposed to probably scholarships from foreign donors for example we are MOU with a company in China who has been given scholarships to our young athletes and they are already there and they also promise that any athletes who identify interest will get 4 years scholarships to go to school and if you want to turn professional, they will do that.

“The same thing in Japan we also have promise, we are really looking forward to given these children more opportunities then more importantly to annex the talents of as many people as possible at this level this about the principal cup in the country.

Dr Are noted that this is the first time the Principal’s Cup is played at national level against what was obtained in the past where it was only played at state level.