The Rotary Club Asaba Metropolitan and the All-Star Football Club at the weekend battle to a 4-4 draw in a novelty football match as part of activities lined up to mark the 2021 kick-out polio campaign worldwide.
Apart from the football match, it also featured a novelty basketball tournament.
Speaking at the Asaba squash club on Saturday, President of the Rotary Club Asaba Metropolitan in Delta State, Arthur Nkemka, noted that the novelty match and the basketball tournament, as well as the street walk, were part of efforts to sensitive people on the need to sustain the successes recorded in the war against polio.
Members of the club had staged a walk through Asaba to create awareness on the need to sustain the zero status of polio in Nigeria.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Nigeria is polio-free.
He said: “We are in the fight against polio, to kick it totally out of the world.
Nigeria is polio-free and we must maintain that zero polio status. We cannot rest until polio is wiped out of the world,” he said.
“That is why we are still neck-deep in the fight against polio. There are only two countries in the world where we have polio that is Pakistan and Afghanistan. We cannot rest until polio is kicked out of the world and the world is polio-free.”
He said in the fight against polio, Rotary international has spent over a million dollars in pushing polio out of the world.
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Also speaking, a Permanent Secretary in the Delta Government House, Eddy Gbegbaje, said the campaign which culminated in the novelty match and novelty basketball tournament was an effort aimed at sustaining the successes, to keep people aware so that polio does not sneak into the country again.
A top member of the club, Mr Clement Afe, said Rotary club decided to pack it up with a novelty match with the All-stars football club of Asaba, noting that football was part of the programme to mark the kick out polio campaign in the world.
“The whole idea of the novelty match is to create awareness/ sensitize everyone on polio and its dangers and the need to sustain it at the current zero level. Rotary is at the forefront of the fight against polio. As the polio chair for my Rotary Club Asaba Metropolitan, the novelty match was conceived to fulfil one of our aims of creating awareness,” Afe said.
