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The Accord senatorial candidate for Oyo South, Mr. Kolapo Kola-Daisi, has described sports as a veritable tool that can be used to efficiently engage and develop the plethora of young talents that across the senatorial district.
He stated this during the unveiling of the Idris Kolapo Kola-Daisi football competition, tagged ‘KKD Cup,’ a tournament he sets up to engage young talents across the nine local government areas in Oyo South.
Explaining the rationale behind KKD cup, Kola-Daisi stated that the competition was borne out of the need to nurture and develop existing talents, most of which he claimed to have met while playing across different pitches during weekends, and to develop new ones to achieve both national and global relevance.
“Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity isn’t. Coming into politics, one of my main motivations was to reverse the message in this quote and provide enough opportunities and platforms for young people to realise the potential we all know they have.
“In the months that I’ve been actively engaging young people across Oyo South, playing soccer with some of them on the weekends, I discovered that the number of talent we have is greater than we realise, and the need to provide immediate opportunities for them to blossom is now.
“This is why I am pleased to announce the launch of the Idris Kolapo Kola-Daisi Football Competition, ‘KKD Cup,’ today. The first among many other plans we’ve set up to provide sure opportunities for the development of our talented young persons.
“As the slogan “AIM FOR THE STARS” suggests, I can assure you that this tournament is not a jamboree; rather, our goal is to use this platform to consistently demonstrate how sports can be deployed as an efficient tool for youth engagement and development, nurturing and exposing these talented ones to both national and global acclaim. And we will achieve it by the grace of God,” he said.
Speaking, the head of the local organising committee for the tournament, Mr. Adewale Michael, said KKD Cup will engage 3,000 young talents and their coaches from 72 teams across the nine local government areas in Oyo South.
“We will have additional teams through playoffs to engage more of them, and with the permission of our principal, I am telling you that the best talents from this tournament will be the first entrants of the KKD sport development academy. We thank him for the vision and for the willingness to do something that considers the future of these young boys and girls,” Adewale said.