ASFON president urges Abuja residents to embrace squash

The President gave this advice while talking to the press at the closing ceremony of the 1st ASFON/Suburban Closed Squash Tournament, a competition organized by ASFON and sponsored by Suburban West Africa Limited. Haruna said ASFON is just six months old, and was started by a group of squash players who came together and decided […]

The President gave this advice while talking to the press at the closing ceremony of the 1st ASFON/Suburban Closed Squash Tournament, a competition organized by ASFON and sponsored by Suburban West Africa Limited.

Haruna said ASFON is just six months old, and was started by a group of squash players who came together and decided to revive the game of squash in Nigeria, starting from Abuja, because squash is a sport that is dying in Nigeria due solely to the reason that people do not know the game and recognize its importance.

Since its inception, the Foundation, which discovered that there are about twenty squash courts in Abuja, with residents virtually not knowing what squash is all about, had embarked on squash coaching clinics for youths in Abuja during the last vacation period, and has a plan of continuing this with follow-up quarterly competitions.

The tournament was in two categories: the regular men’s competition, won by Amos Haruna with Shahabu Goma as runner up, and the veteran competition for players above the age of 45, won by Nebo Emodi with Nuhu Ibrahim as runner up, and also included a ladies’ game as a side attraction.

In his speech at the event, the Chief Operating Officer of Suburban West Africa, the sponsor of the competition, Mr Suleiman Mohammed Arzika, said the company sponsored the competition as a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) project, because one of its values is to contribute positively to the society.

According to him, Suburban has identified that squash is a good tool to redirect the youths from negative activities and pastimes to beneficial extracurricular engagements and to make people keep fit.

The winner of the veteran competition, Eng. Emodi, said he was happy for winning and gave glory to God for enabling him to have an injury-free and victorious game, while he admonished other veterans like himself to stay competitive and always make sure they get properly warmed up before every game.