Interested athletes who are willing to participate in the maiden edition of Niger Delta Sports Festival (NDSF) will now have the opportunity to do their registration online following the uploading of the form on the NDSF portal.

The Co-Chairman of the Technical Committee, Enefiok Udo-Obong, who announced the development, said the decision is to ease the process for intending athletes spread across the nine member states.

“While athletes can still obtain hard copy forms at designated collections points, we believe that for ease of registration, they can go online and fill out the forms”, Udo-Obong said in an interview with NDSF Media.

Meanwhile, the Australia 2000 Olympic 4x400m gold medallist disclosed that the local government and federal constituency trial dates have been adjusted to allow states to participate in the qualifying events of the National Sports Festival ball games which coincided with the earlier scheduled date of February 20.

Consequent upon this adjustment, we have also rejigged dates for the state trials and closed camping.

The LG and Constituency trials will now hold from February 25. Afterwards, the states will hold their finals and closed camping,” he stated.

Udo-Obong also noted that the longer period for registration will provide time and opportunity for all interested sportsmen and women within the region to register for the trials.

About 3000 athletes are expected to compete for honours in 17 sports at the festival.

The maiden NDSF is open to the nine states that make up the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). The states are Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, and Delta. Others are Edo, Imo, Ondo, and Rivers.

The NDDC is the major sponsor of the festival, which seeks to spot and nurture sportsmen and women from the region to provide them platforms to express their innate talent through sports. (The Nation)

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