Edo 2020: Kebbi Withdraws As 12 States Fight For Honours In Football Events

  Edo 2020: Kebbi Withdraws As 12 States Fight For Honours In Football Event By Omolagba Oluwayemi Technical Officer in Football Event at the ongoing 2020 National Sports Festival, Dr Ayo Abdulrahaman has confirmed that only twelve states will participate in the Men's and Women's football events which are scheduled to kick off today. Six states will slug it out in the Men's category and six also registered to contest for medals in women's football event. He revealed that Kebbi state withdrew from participating in the men's football event few days to the draws. "The only State that we were informed that pulled out before the start of the technical meeting was Kebbi State, other states are still in the competition. For male we have Delta, Edo, Imo, Lagos, FCT, Borno and for females we have Delta, Edo, Kaduna, Kwara and Lagos. And penalty for the withdrawal of Kebbi will be a question for the LOC maybe if they have any rules to accommodate withdrawal or not. Abdulrahaman who spoke with BSN Sports after the draw also said the football event will be the last tournament to wrap up the festival. "We're starting from 7th and it's supposed to end of the 12th according to the program released by the Main Organizing Committee of the National Sports Festival. We were told that Football' event will last for 6 days between the 7th and 12th of April. "Because of the logistics as related to time giving to us to organise the male and female, we have decided to put the teams into two groups A and B and we'll be using the two venues of Uniben playing pitch and that of Western Boys High School. We'll alternating those matches in the morning making sure no match is played in the afternoon with only the final of men's event to hold by 4pm, he added. "I will love to remind you that this is National Sports Festival events and our being here is for us to lend our technical know-how to the organisation of these Games. We're not totally in-charge of football event here, we're only assisting to steward the event of football."