By Justina Auta
To mark the Children’s Day celebration, some schools in the FCT, Saturday, engaged in sporting activities to improve the health, wellbeing and talent detection amongst pupils at a young age.
The event, organised by Jimmik Surestart Schools, Gaduwa Estate in the FCT drew schools like Peculiar British school, Beautiful Beginning Academy, JFK international school, amongst others.
Mrs Rosemary Akintunde, Proprietess, Jimmik Surestart Schools said the essence of the collaboration was to discover talents, develop and encourage the students to delve into sporting activities as a career.
Akintunde, explained that efforts were in place to also engage some African countries in some of these sporting competition, as well as reawaken their interest in long jump, javelin, race, short put.
“We invited seven schools to collaborate, where we will first do a tournament internally.
“Then take them to African countries to compete with them. We have already started going to Morocco embassy so that we can start from their and move from there, ” she said.
Also, a medical practioner, Dr Fatima Musa, stressed the need to encourage children to engage in sporting activities to keep them fits and reduce the chances of developing any health complications
“Sporting activity is a very healthy lifestyle. Because most times in our daily routines, we tend to sit down working or watching television, which is sedentary.
“This causes alot of adverse effects on the cardiovascular system and general health of the individual.
“So exercise is an important lifestyle modification. The children are exerting themselves by engaging in physical activities and it will help them to be physical and mentally fit,” she said.
Mrs Rita Malam, a parent said: ” This will impact positively on the students because even if they participate in academic activities, they still need to be kept fit and physically active for their mental stability, which will go along way towards helping them.”
Miss Usuak Robinson, a student, saidI: “I feel so excited and it will help us to be physically fit and help the school and other experts discover talents, which will help those who want to go into sport as a profession.”
Also, Abdullahi Sirajo: ” Sporting activities have alot of benefits to both our physical, mental and social life.
“Also, this event has enabled us to interact more with students from other schools, discover new talents, all these will help us in our future career choice.”
