Kachia’s Gumel Wins ActionAid/GPD’s Cup in Kaduna Peace Match
http://www.newsportng.com.ng Gumel Community in Kachia LGA, Kaduna state, has emerged champions of the 2024 Kaduna Peace Match, organized by ActionAid Nigeria, (AAN) in partnership with Global Peace Development. (GPD)
Gumel claimed a hard-fought win over Turunku Community from Igabi LGA, scoring the decisive goal in the fifth minute of the first half.
The match, held on Monday at Kaduna’s Ahmadu Bello Stadium, saw Gumel gain an advantage over Turunku, who had finished second in the previous year’s competition.
The SARVE III initiative, funded by the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF), seeks to strengthen community resilience against violent extremism to foster a culture of peace and tolerance amongst youths, who are identified as driving force of violent extremism in the society.
Speaking with newsmen shortly after the match, the Captain Gumel community Anthony James disclosed that they were eliminated from the group stage of the tournament last year, a disappointed he noted strengthened them to work hard for better performance this year.
He added that they will not relent but will rather continue to build more skills for subsequent games to retain the trophy.
Also, the Captain, Turunku community of Igabi LGA, Umar Lawal expressed that, “Last year we came second. We thought that the game would favour us today but reverse is the case. That is the game of football and we will continue to do our best until we win the trophy in subsequent competitions.”
In his remarks, the Executive Director, GPD Mr. Esike Ebruke said that the game is to commemorate the annual September 21st 2024 International Day Of Peace, “Cultivating the Culture of Peace.”
He stressed that, “the importance of this event is to promote the culture of peace through football like the theme of the Int’l Peace Day. So encouraging collaboration promoting culture of peace comes with many activities, like education, football and promoting justice. Patriotism cannot happen when there is no justice.
“When you look at football, we can be able to create social justice because nobody is undermined due to its transparent nature. I am sure that if we are transparent in all we do in our respective communities, there will be social cohesion.
“The players put up their efforts. They played without rancor, they played with peace and they played to ensure that they promote peace in their community and from what we also told them, community cannot be in peace unless they work together even as community peace is teamwork like football itself.”
Earlier, the Program Coordinator for SARVE III project, Mr. Aliyu Adamu, remarked that the peace match is to see how they can bring Youths together to celebrate Int’l Day of Peace which is celebrated on the 21st of September, every year.
He said, “in this program, we organized youths in our various communities amongst 12 communities in Kaduna to promote social cohesion, synergy and understanding among the diverse youths of different Religions, ethnicity and others to see how we can foster peace because sports like football is a well known activity that bond youths together. We believe that by uniting them through sports, we will have youths across various communities who would serve as peace ambassadors when the need arises.”
