Tonobok Okowa, the Chairman of Delta Sports Commission, says the state will be delighted to continuously have the Super Eagles play their
matches in Asaba.Okowa told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Asaba that the team’s handlers seemed comfortable with the Delta capital city’s hosting capabilities and facilities.
“The state government has not influenced it in any way.
“The choice of Asaba by the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) may be out of the fact that the state has successfully hosted other international matches and that the facilities are good.
“The state government has not really done any form of pushing to continue to host the matches in Asaba, but if the state has the option, it will grab it.
“We want to keep bringing them (the Eagles) back because we want to always put the stadium into use and our people love to have them here,’’ he said.
The Delta sports official pointed out that Asaba was well situated and bordered by states such as Edo, Anambra and several others.
“I guess the NFF loves what we have here and the first time we ever hosted an event for them was the Aiteo Cup.
“I am sure they (NFF) loved the turnout of people and the crowd was overwhelming. This may be why they are coming back.
“The city’s location is strategic and I know that they will always want to use this place and we will be obliged to be giving it to them at all times,” he said.
Okowa assured that every arrangement to successfully host the three international matches slated for Friday and next week at the Keshi Stadium had been concluded.
He added that they expected to have a surge of spectators.
“Here, we are talking about two international matches between Nigeria’s Super Eagles and Seychelles coming up on Friday, the Super Eagles’ friendly with Egypt and the Nigeria Under-23 team’s fixture against Libya next week.
“We want people to come out and cheer them, but we guess we will have a surge. However, we have put mechanism in place to control the crowd and the traffic will be put under check throughout the period of the match.
“We have a good security architecture in place to manage the situation,” he said.
(NAN)