Sir: Underneath the need to harness the vast human potentials of our country with the National Sports Festival in Edo State lay the inherent danger of the ‘second wave’ of the COVID-19. Underneath that need also lay the need to express the danger in going ahead with this National Sports Festival in the face of this second wave. Underneath the need to express this danger also lay the fear that we may express our fears to no avail.
But The Guardian, the doyen of mainstream journalism in Nigeria, helped us at CERLSI to make our voice heard. We are happy to say that in the midst of the voices either urging the Edo government to tally-ho with the Sports festival in spite of the scourge of the COVID-19, and to those of us on the other divide urging a restraint until some measure of control is established against the second wave of the COVID-19, the Nigerian Sports Ministry established a balance with their excellent decision to tarry awhile till a hypothetical date in April 2021.
A certain law, the law of least effort says that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. What the Sports Ministry has done, in further shifting the Sports Festival slated for February 14, 2021 to a hypothetical date in April proves true that even though people gravitate to the least demanding course of action, the consideration for the safety of Nigerian lives is a least demanding course of action.
On behalf of the board of CERLSI, Edo people and Nigerians, we thank The Guardian Nigeria, first for helping to put our concerns out about the danger of letting the Sports Festival go on, under the shadow of the COVID-19, and second, the Sports Ministry for taking the right decision. It is said that in the economy of action, effort is a cost.
Bob Majiri Oghene Etemiku, deputy executive director,Civil Empowerment & Rule of Law Support Initiative, CERLSI.
