Dele-Oladejo South West Open U-13 and 16 Squash championship is set to begin today at the Ibadan Recreation Club (IRC), Sabo, Ibadan.
Speaking at the press briefing on Wednesday, Founder and Patron of Dele Oladejo Women Health Foundation, Dr Emmanuel Dele-Oladejo said the championship is meant to serve as a clarion call to all that is concerned to develop productive youth engagement strategies needed to contain and channel their inherent exuberances towards adding positive value to the society.
Dele-Oladejo who is a United Kingdom based medic in General Clinical Nursing with specialty in Nursing Anesthesiology and was represented by Mr Abiodun Akinyele, charged the participants to give in their best.
He said “This squash open will be a yearly programme and the concept is predicated on the mental and physical smartness required to succeed in the game of squash.
“The Oladejo Women Health Foundation considers the family as the basic unit of the society, which if properly engineered or re-engineered as the case maybe, can add better value to the society rather than the current ‘sour grapes’. The age grade championship is a vehicle to reach out to a vital component of the family in his impressionable and formative stage thereby rescuing the teenage youth from the clutches of delinquency,” he said.
Also, the former Chairman, Squash Section, IRC, Dr. Akinbobola Cole enjoined the participants to give in their best and be good ambassadors of their respective states and encouraged them to take their academics seriously.
Meanwhile, one of the former Nigeria squash players, Oyeniyi Oyewumi urged both the state and the federal government to invest more into sports other than football.
He asked investors to earmark 10 percent of what they spent on football to other sports which he believes will lead to development in the sector.
The tournament is expected to start today and end on Saturday.
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