Innocent Ujah, President of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), on Saturday in Abuja commended the association’s FCT Zone for successfully organising the sixth edition of the NMA Doctors’ Games.
Ujah told newsmen after the games’ closing ceremony that the commendation was necessary because FCT zone was given a short notice to organise and host this year’s edition.
“The event was earlier scheduled to hold in Kaduna state, but due to reasons of insecurity it was shifted to Abuja.
“However, it has been well organised in spite of the short notice given to our FCT zone,” he said.
The NMA President then attributed this to the fact that “doctors are versatile in any domain they find themselves.”
He went on to describe performances at the games as a demonstration of the fact that Nigerian doctors should not be in the hospital always.
“We must come out to do any sport of our choice, otherwise most of our activities will be restricted to either in the labour ward, in the consulting room or in the emergency unit.
“We can keep fit by exercising ourselves through sports activities.
”For example, the final football event game between the South East and FCT zones showed that Doctors are versatile, that we can do sports just as we can treat patients,” Ujah said.
He lamented the fact that COVID-19 kept the association’s activities very low, saying it led to lack of sponsorship which hampered the preparations for this year’s competition.
“We are a determined association. In spite of the challenge of lack of funding, we held on to ourselves to organise this competition,” the NMA President said.
Speaking also, Uche Ojimah, the Chairman of NMA Sports Committee, noted that this year’s sports competition was better than that of 2020.
“I can proudly say this year’s event is better, the standard has improved and the standard is very high. We have almost 600 athletes in this event, compared to 2020 when we had 400 athletes,” he said.
Ojimah then appealed to the Federal Ministry of Health and its Youth and Sports Development counterpart to initiate a “health workers day”.
“There should be a health workers day to diffuse the tension in the health sector. We beg the Federal Ministry of Health and the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development to organise a health workers day,.
“They should call other health workers to come together for us to do sports together.
“We need to play together, laugh together to make health workers happy together,” he said.
On his part, Enema Amodu, the chairman of NMA FCT chapter, said he was happy that they had an exciting competition.
“We have the facilities here in the FCT and we were able to deploy our resources in the human aspect to ensure we get to this level of excellence.
“The athletes have done well as we are second on the medals table, and the greater objective achieved is that we have been able to come together to have fun.
“The aim of the event now is to let it grow to a certain level so that we can involve other health workers,” he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria ( NAN) reports that 10 sports events feature in the sixth edition of the NMA Doctors’ Games, namely Draughts, Table Tennis, Ayo, Athletics, Badminton, Volleyball, Basketball, Golf, Tennis and Football.
Below is the final medals table of the 6th NMA Doctors’ Games:
Team Gold Silver Bronze Total
South South 13 9 8 30
Lagos 9 10 3 22
FCT 5 7 9 21
South East 4 2 12 18
South West 5 3 5 13
North Central 2 4 3 9
North West 1 4 6 11
North East 1 1 8 10
TOTAL 40 40 54 134
NAN reports that the competition which stated on Tuesday ended on Saturday.(NAN)