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By Esther Onyegbula, Benin-city

The 3rd edition of the Gregory Imafidon Foundation football tournament is set to kick off in Benin City, Edo State. The highly-anticipated youth football tournament tagged “Catch them young, kick against crime” for boys under the age of 15 is scheduled for early next year.

Gregory Imafidon Foundation

Teams from Edo, Delta, Rivers, Cross Rivers, Akwa-Ibom, Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Osun, Anambra, Imo, and Abia states, will be participating in the tournament.

Mr. Imafidon said “the aim of the tournament is to take the youths off the street and engage them meaningfully, to help reduce the rate of crime especially in Edo State” Mr. Imafidon added that all hands must be on deck to stop youth from crime.

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The winner of the tournament will go home with a gold cup while scholarship, gifts and monetary prizes will be given to outstanding teams and players. Other attractions include new jerseys for semi-finalists. Medals will be given to Gold, Silver, and Bronze winning teams. Cash prizes and gifts for the best player of the tournament, best-behaved team, best defender, best midfielder, highest goal scorer, best goalkeeper.

“We are still accepting donations and pledges to ensure a successful tournament so that we can make the visiting and participating states comfortable in our bid to contribute our quota to help reduce the crime rate in Edo State”.

“We are requesting sponsors from groups and individuals who are willing to help and positively touch the lives of our youth through empowerment and scholarship donation to help take the youth off the. On behalf of the vulnerable youths in Edo state, I say thank you to all who have seen the need to make Edo State a better and a crime-free State by contributing towards the success of this move. We cannot afford to lose any more youth to crime.  The lives of our youth are valuable'”. Mr. Imafidon said.

It can  be recalled that two outstanding players, Emeka Utomi of Ine Stars FC and Efe Ugiagbe of Unique  FC were given scholarship during the last edition in 2018/2019  donated by the founder, Gregory Imafidon, an Edo State-born ex-youth footballer and  practicing Family Nurse Practitioner based in Dallas, Texas, USA and another ex-youth footballer, Nosa Odiase, based in Sweden.

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