Rojenny International Stadium Back To Life Gov Obi Supports With N30m Posted by Orient Daily on June 28, 2013 in Interview, Sports | 0 Comment Rojenny International Stadium, Oba, Idemmili South Local Government Area Anambra state, Nigeria has come back to life after Governor Peter Obi doled out initial N30 Million to give it a facelift. The international stadium is inside Rojenny Tourist and Games village Oba, with an eighty thousand (80,000) seaters capacity. It has a standard football pitch and tartan tracks was a home . No wonder Udoji united F.C and Jasper F.C which has produced many international and national football stars used the stadium then which has hosted the under 17 Golden Eaglets before representing Nigeria in Japan 1993 junior world cup which they eventually won. The Rojenny Tourist and Games Village with many facilities such as: standard swimming pool, two standard lawn tennis court, basket ball, volley ball, badminton, table tennis etc and entertainment, facilities such as: zoo, recreation centers, garden park, club house, restaurant, hotels and suites, conference hall, cultural centers and church, mosque and traditional worship centers etc is owned by Chief Rommy Ezeonwuka. Chief Ezeonwuka is the Founder Ogirishi Igbo Foundation (Igbo peace, reconciliation and conflict resolution center) located inside the Rojenny Tourist and Games Village Garden. Last week the FA cup between Warri Wolves and Dynamite FC of Benin and a cross section of dignitaries at the field spoke to a team of reporters from Orient led by Sport Editor Tony Oji, Chiemeka Ezeemo and Chinwe Okafor on the way forward of the Rojenny sports field top make it reignite interest as in the past. Excerpts : The first to speak is FIFA Match Commissioner and a Member of FA, Anambra state Chapter, Mr Victor Nwangwu Why were you in Rojenny Stadium the other day? I am here to monitor the FA Match between Warri Wolves and Dynamite FC of Benin which ended in favour of Warri Wolves. It was a very interesting football match and the pitch is also a standard one, I say Kudos to Rojenny Chief Executive Officer, Chief Ezeonwuka Rommy. Did you observe the work going on in the stadium and how will you rate it. Yes, it is a good one and will boost the standard of sporting events that Chief Rommy Ezeonwuka wants to initiate to engage our up coming youths. Both teams that played today enjoyed the pitch and the atmosphere here and the spectators stand has gotten a better shape, soon this place will start booming again. Sir, are you aware that the state gov. gave the sum of N30 million to support the good work of Rojenny and to uplift the image of sports in our state? Yes, what is worth doing, is also worth doing well. I thank the Governor for giving such support at a time we are clamouring for sports resuscitation in our state. Many sports legendS in this country are from this state, so we should lead by example and always set the pace for others to emulate. INTERVIEW WITH OGILISHI IGBO ON SPORTS Chief Rommy Ezeonwuka is the Proprietor of Rojenny International Resort and Games Village , Oba Idemmili Anambra state. He is also the founder of Ogilishi Igbon Foundation . We have seen your hand work in this resort. It shows that life has returned here again, how do you feel about that? Well life has come back here and I feel happy for the Anambra people. I thank God for Governor Peter Obi for igniting the light you are seeing today because everyone knows that he was actually the one that came here and saw the state of the stadium. He realized that this stadium sometime ago was the pride of Anambra State and vowed that he will actually do everything possible to revive it and immediately he ignited the fire, the Federal Government picked it up and started posting teams here. Federal Government banished Akwa-Ibom to play their home matches here. They have come and played with Kwara and Kwara was jubilating, today Warri Wolves of Delta and the Dynamites of Benin played here and right now they are jubilating. I don’t see another thing someone can do for his people than to revive the Anambra stadium. So I thank God for Anambra people and for having a place like Rojenny. How were you able to use 30 million naira to do all this magic? Is there some other supporters? Well, the day Governor Peter obi came here I told him that I want to show him that I am a magician, it is on record. I told him that with this stipend which cannot do anything for the ordinary person, I will make good use of it to tell him that am a magician. He will see the impact of the magic am doing here because some people work from physical work while some people work from astral work, both physical, mental and astral work belong to the soul and every body works from the level he operates. I am operating from astral plane, I am not operating from physical plane that is why a kobo to me is 1 million, and 1 million to me is a billion and a billion, trillion that is why you see something happening but where the problem lies now is the athletic tartan track we want to put, that one consumes a lot of money that runs into millions of naira. I have told Governor Obi that this is the only stadium that Anambra can boast of now, there is a need to put the tartan tracks back to revive field events like the Jamaica stadium because we are only known for soccer and we have soccer pitches everywhere, you can learn soccer without complete field. Nobody can learn field events without complete field. Anybody can put a four corner of a field and put a goal post and say it’s a stadium but when you are talking about sports stadium. We talk of stadium that have a room that accommodates field events that goes from athletic tartan track, high jump, long jump, javelin, etc. It is why every other country excels in Olympic and Nigeria always falls back. Then with the tartan tracks, we are trying to put up here by 4,5 years time, we are going to produce the future Olympians in Anambra State. What happened to the zoo and every other aspect of this recreational centre? Everything is functioning, the zoo is there, a lot of animals are there but it needs to be equipped, amusement park is there, its functioning but it needs to be equipped and so many other sporting facilities, tennis court, swimming pool, basket ball all this needs reactivation and don’t forget that this place has existed for the past 30 years and have produced a lot of champions. Don’t also forget that the place is always thrown open for sports ministry to train their swimmers and other things and everybody knows that anything that has to do with sports activity is not money yielding instead it is social facilities that is supposed to be provided by government but when I see myself providing it as an individual, all I need is a support from the government which am happy Gov. Peter Obi has done, but I told him that he cannot bring me to the middle of the ocean and allow me to drown. We need more help to complete the work we are doing in the stadium. Some people said I would have used the money to enjoy myself, why investing it in the field? I said to them that what shall it benefit me to enjoy myself and allow where we can use to change the youth restiveness to be lavished because the problem we are having today is youth restiveness. The youths spirit and mind is not glued in anything, the Europeans has glued the European youths in the Euro leagues and the rest of the world has glued their youths using sports so we can as well use sports to glue our youths by providing the facility for them here to function, that is why am contributing whatever stipend I have to put here in order, even I have borrowed a lot of money which I hope to repay whenever I have assistance from the government and other individuals and am even approaching ordinary individuals to assist here, that they cannot continue to desert Anambra State. It cannot help them instead when they die let them be buried over there, we must fix Anambra and the only way we can is to arrest youth restiveness which a place like this can contribute a lot and that is what am doing, so they need to support instead of coming down to your home town with 20 mobile police for their security, for how long will it continue? You can change the lives of youths here so that you don’t need to come back home with truck of mobile policemen, because the youths are armed robbers and kidnappers, if you change their lives they can now avert such dangers and you will return to your father’s home going free. Do you have enough accommodations for continental matches? You have seen things for yourself, we have a lot, and we can host the nation. Anambra is proud of this place. It can host a national sports festival. What is the hectare? Here is 8 square kilometers square land, it is what you see here and inside this 8 kilometer square land you have every facility that has to do with lodging and all other sports facilities. What was your motivation to invest billions in early 80s? Because I was crazy and a mad man, it’s only a mad man that can do something like this, for you to be an inventor you must be a crazy man, you can’t be a normal man and event anything. So that time you were crazy and mad? Yes because normal man could have used the money to enjoy himself. And you invested how many billions? 5 naira How do you mean by 5 naira? As you are seeing it now. Is there any other thing you want to say that we have not asked you? I want to say that Igbo land is what we have, all of you in Europe, America, South Africa, London, Canada, should come home and embrace home, appease the gods of your father land then encourage those that are at home. Everybody cannot desert their home land, we have no other home than the Igbo land, so whether you are everywhere and here is your ogilishi, come and partner with ogilishi, partner with your governor, we are in a position to transform Igbo nation and am 100% ready to give my own creativity. I believe in creativity and invention. What you call miracles is invention and creativity, I have the formula and only the formula can do anything possible minus formula you can’t break even in any mathematics, but when you know the formula, you just laugh. I have the formula to transform Igbo nation. Have you ever played any game in your life? I play all games and I belong to all your religion Are any of your children taking over from you in any of the games? Yes many of them , my daughter is a first class athletic medalist in America. Some time she represented America in Olympics. We are good in athletics. Our parents were poor but through athletics we were wining laurels that were sustaining our English kind of property. If not inside of having baskets in my parents’ home, we were having something like buckets and plates and we were only winning it from the athletics competition while we were schooling. INTERVIEW WITH SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO GOVERNOR PETER OBI ON SPORTS Mr Arthur Ebunam, Special Assistant to the Governor (Sports) was at the match and spoke this way : We learnt that Governor Peter Obi disbursed some money to Rojenny, Chief Romanus Ezeonwuka for upgrading the facilities here. How true was that and how much was involved? To be exact it’s 30 million naira and you see what 30 million naira is doing here, it’s a great transformation and am impressed so far. What comes again, are you still going to give him more money? Let me tell you the truth, we are trying to find out exactly where the N30 million would end before His Excellency will go ahead, if it’s not enough we can do the final completion of the facility then he might decide to give him some more money but for now let’s watch and see how 30 million is going to go. You watched the sports competition this evening here, who are those involved and What happened? Honestly I am not aware of the sports competition going on this evening , I was told about this match by 2.00pm, so I had to rush to the stadium to watch the match and of course to see how development and repairs are going on here. It was Warri Wolves and Dynamites of Benin and it ended one-zero in favour of Warri Wolves for the FA Cup competition. Why was it brought here? Because it is the zone by zone. They cannot play in Warri or play in Benin. Rangers will be going to another zone, Heartland would also be going to another Zone, and it’s not like they are not going to be playing in their zones, that’s how it’s been worked out by the FA and NFF. Is this largess to Rojenny applicable to other proprietors of recreation centres? Well Oddy Ikpeazu got same amount to develop the Imobi Stadium in Onitsha and Rojenny got, and we are coming on gradually. So what his Excellency is trying to do is to make sure that the youths will have facilities and infrastructures in place to practice, to play and improve themselves .that’s exactly what his Excellency is trying to do. From what you have seen in the stadium, how can you access his achievements so far? So far the looks have changed, they are working on the chairs but let’s see in next month or two we will come back again to see how far this place has gone and to see the drastic changes it looks better than it used to look, so we are impressed, even the Warri Wolves who played here were impressed, so the work is going and the man is doing a good job trying to use the money very efficiently. The governor’s cup is coming up by the end of this month, so how is it going to look like? Well it’s going to Zones because it involves 177 communities and it will be by sub method, they will start playing among their communities here, then when they project to quarter -finals, semi-finals, finals, and then they will start bringing in teams here to play or Ikpeazu stadium Onitsha or Awka stadium. INTERVIEW WITH THE ACTING SECRETARY OF NIGERIA FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION, ANAMBRA CHAPTER Mr Emeka Rapheal, an ex rangers and presently the acting secretary of football Association Anambra State spoke this way What is your Impression about Rojenny Stadium Complex? Definitely every member including me and including all the members of the FA are happy .Anambra State generally are happy because action is coming back to Rojenny and lots of things have been put in place to make sure that teams come here to play their football matches. Some years back, we had about three teams playing here and two years ago too, we had Anambra united and Anambra Pillars, lots of actions and matches were going on here , league matches, some teams that were banished from their various homes were transferred to this place but after some time, we didn’t know what happened, some of those teams got disbanded, matches not been played here anymore, so things were began to fade, a lot of facilities began to fade because it seemed then that the proprietor was not doing anything but we thank God that for the past one or two weeks things are getting better. Last week we hosted Akwa United and Kwara United in one of the league matches, Akwa United was banished from Uyo to come and play here and today government has been able to support him with some finances to make sure, because it’s not an easy thing, one man doing all the Job. What’s the message for Anambrarians in regards to this place? The message is that they should start trooping in out enmass, this is a structure that has a zoo, it has a football field, a football field that can host continental matches a field in Anambra that can host continental matches, this is a place that can host any event that will pull crowd. You have hotels, night clubs. It is the best place you can find in terms of recreation and leisure sports, anything you can think of. Anambrarians are being expected in no sooner time, they will be coming here, a lot of things will be happening here. Is there any other thing you would want to say? I am appealing to sports loving individuals to put up something like this in the state, it’s going to help the youths and sports in this state, it’s going to open up Anambra State to outsiders and boost tourism in the state, because this is the only man that has something like this in the whole state because it’s not just about football or sports, it’s about entertainment tourism, it’s the best you can find in Anambra. INTERVIEW WITH Chief Sam Odinammadu (the Ikeorah one of Oba) What is your impression about the match? Am satisfied with what am seeing and am surprised too. It looks like we are not in Oba, because if you watch about 5years ago, I came here, it was somehow but today am highly impressed with the way am seeing things and the job going on here. Any message for the government that supported Rojenny? I am thanking Mr. Peter Obi because God used him to revive this place and I am saying that God will provide for him so he would bring more money because the work is too much. I am using this opportunity to call on our people in Oba to give this place every support it needed to thrive again, because it gave us fame and registered our name in the map of the world when it was booming. Now that the glory is coming back , I am calling on good people of Anambra state to patronize the stadium and resort in all ramifications because it is our collective pride. INTERVIEW WITH CHIEF HON. BEN CHIBUEZE (Ochudo of Oba) How did you see the money Governor Peter Obi gave Rojenny to revive here? He indeed have tried, chief Romanus Ezonwuka Ogilishi Ndi Igbo, the proprietor has tried because there are people that government will give the Money to and they will useless it. But what he is building and is yet to build is worth more than what government brought and am impressed and am appealing to the government of Anambra state that he should support him to the end as what he is doing will benefit Anambra. You left what you are doing and came to watch match, what is behind it? It shows that there is improvement and we don’t have this type of stadium in Anambra.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 06:14:52 +0000
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