Uyo stadium built to produce World stars – Gov Godswill Akpabio

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Governor of Akwa Ibom state has said the drive behind the construction of the newly-opened Uyo stadium was in desire to provide facilities to manufacture international talents.AKWA-IBOM-STADIUM-1-11-e1415434037752

The building of Akwa Ibom International Stadium was with intent of producing World stars of international standard in sports when the ‘Nest of Champions’ is fully utilized, governor Godswill Akpabio has said.

At the commissioning ceremony of the ultra-modern 30,000 capacity seater Stadium, Akpabio said the intention of the state constructing the gigantic sporting edifice was in opportunity to compete and make great gains from the World biggest business of sports.

He said that the business of sports, has “become more lucrative than politics,” and joked he would have loved to be a sportsman rather than a politician.

“The global sports industry is worth more than $145.3 billion and we want to share from that money. Floyd Mayweather has earned more than $100 million dollars in less than 72 minutes of boxing this year,” Akpabio said.

“Cristiano Ronaldo earns more than $80 million yearly from endorsement alone. Serena Williams earns more than $10 million yearly from tennis and she is able to do that because she was exposed to the infrastructure early in life.

“That is why we built this so that our people will be exposed to world class facilities early in life,” he said.

On reasons why he built the stadium, he said: “Well, the driving force behind it all is love. I love my people and of course, if you love humanity, you will want to give them the best.

“And I realised that everything on earth is vanity. So, no matter how much money you have, money cannot give you life, money cannot even give you happiness.

“So, if you are able to provide love, put smiles on the faces of people, I think that’s much more a greater thing for me. And I get excited when I see that people are happy.

“And I had made up my mind, with a lot of anger when I came in that I must show that government can work and indeed seeing this kind of edifice, I can tell you that the anger is waning. That, yes indeed, government can work.

“I wanted to prove something to future generations and I hope that Nigerians after me, aspiring for leadership will feel the need to learn the little I have experienced here,” he noted.

He also explained the choice of Julius Berger as the construction company, the proper maintenance of the stadium’s facilities.

“The Stadium was constructed by Julius Berger, and you know that they are very good, they’ve been around for over 35 years in Nigeria. And it is a foreign company that has cut a niche for itself in the construction industry in this country.

“So, I have signed a 10-year contract maintenance with them because I don’t want this to ever go down. Like I show the Former President of Ghana, for me I’m very humbled to have had the opportunity to present this to Africa.

“And I believe that from here, Africa will produce a lot of champions. We will never again, should we go for Olympics and come back without gold medal, never again. That is why I’ve presented this to Africa,” he concluded.

The stadium is already approved to host Nigeria’s final qualifying game with South Africa on November 19.

The arena will also host an international friendly between Nigeria and the five-time World Champions Brazil with star player Neymar to feature on March 29, 2015.

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