By Francis Ajuonuma
Organisers of the Above 50 Mini-Olympics have raised the prize money for the football event from eight million naira (N8m) to ten million naira (N10m).
Chairman of the organising committee, Dr. Rafiu Ladipo, who disclosed this at the end of the committee’s meeting yesterday, said the decision to increase the prize money was to accommodate more winners.
According him, the winner of the football event will now receive N5m, the runner’s up will go home with N2.5m, the third placed team will get N1.5m while the fourth placed team will earn N1m.
Dr. Ladipo, who is also President General of Nigeria Football Supporters Club (NFSC) said that so far 14 teams have registered for the football event and more are expected to complete their registration before the close of entry on August 31st.
He noted that the games will commence in the second week of October and urged interested teams yet to send in their entries for registration to do so on or before the August 31st deadline as there won’t be room for extension of registration.
“We’ve raised the bar; the prize money is no longer eight million naira (N8m). We’ve raised the bar to ten million naira. The first place winners will take N5m, runners’ up N2.5m, third place N1.5, while fourth place is N1m, totaling N10m.
“We’ve been able to get 14 teams that have registered so far, and we’re expecting more but we’ve given a deadline that by the 31st of August we’ll not accept any new registration, we’ll do with whatever we’ve, the 14 teams we’ve because there will be no time for us to crapple with the technicalities of the game,” he said.
Dr. Ladipo also expressed delight that the organising committee has made a lot of progress towards staging a successful games.
“Some of the decisions taken, actually, was seeing that the event proper will start second week of October this year. We’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve other events that will be taking place in other sports like Boxing, Table Tennis, Badminton and Ayo olopon will feature at the games,” he added.
