Members of the Local Organising Committee (LOC) charged with the responsibility to organise the Aisha Buhari Invitational Women’s Football Tournament have reiterated their unflinching commitment towards organising a high profile competition befitting the nation’s First Lady.
The committee led by Seyi Akinwunmi, who doubles as the 1st Vice President of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is buoyed up to put in place a flawless
football showpiece.
Already key actors in the round leather games have weighed into the football fiesta namely the FIFA President, Gianni Infantino, Secretary General, Fatma Samoura, CAF President, Patrice Motsepe, and the programme initiator, NFF President, CAF Executive and FIFA Council Member, Amaju Pinnick, among other top ranked football dignitaries across the globe.
The top grade six-nation tournament being put together by the NFF in honour of the country’s First Lady will see the hosts, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, South Africa, Mali and Morocco try to outdo each other in celebratory and convivial duels.
The First Lady’s Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) ‘the Aisha Buhari Foundation’ with its catchword ‘Future Assured’ is an advocacy outfit pushing to the front banner the wellbeing of women, children and adolescents.
The NGO tries to optimize the potentials of women youth and children through interventions in health, education and economic empowerment.
Aside football, the event will try to sensitise Africans on the benefits of sports to global development.
It will address issues affecting women in developing countries with direct reference to the place of the girl-child in the society.
These are core values being promoted by the country’s First Lady in her pet project ‘Future Assured’.
The laudable objectives embedded in the First Lady’s NGO are in tandems with the FIFA global strategy for women’s football. The world football governing body believes that women’s football brings one very important benefit to the many young girls and women involved in the game – empowerment. Encouraging empowerment through football, growing the game, getting more girls involved in it earlier and keeping women in football longer are all key elements of FIFA’s Women’s Football Strategy.
According to FIFA’s first female Secretary General, Fatma Samoura: “The women’s game is a top priority for FIFA and via our new strategy we will work hand-in-hand with our 211 member associations around the world to increase grassroots participation, enhance the commercial value of the women’s game and strengthen the structures surrounding women’s football to ensure that everything we do is sustainable and has strong results.
“Most importantly it will make football more accessible to girls and women and encourage female empowerment, a subject of great importance, now more than ever before,” observed the Senegalese scribe of the world football governing body.
The Director of Organisation of the invitational tournament, Aisha Falode, enthused that the quality of persons keying into and commending the programme is a clear testimony to the fact that the nation’s First Lady is highly regarded and respected within and outside the shores of the country.
“The growing number of highly placed persons keying into the programme is heartwarming and a confirmation of the world-acclaim respect for the First Lady of Nigeria and what she stands for especially as it concerns the girl-child. “The identification of key world football personalities for the programme is in line with the football body’s programmes of growth, commercialisation, marketing and rebranding of women’s football, which of late have seen issues affecting the game receiving global attention at every forum.
Falode stressed that the FIFA strategies for the Women’s Game are captured in its five-point agenda: “Develop and Grow on and off the Pitch, Showcase The Game and Improve Women’s Competitions, Communicate and Commercialise, Broaden Exposure and Value, Govern and Lead, Strive For Gender Balance, Educate and Empower, Build Capacity and Knowledge.”
