By Daily Sports on March 7, 2020

The Edo 2020 National Sports Festival is on course to revolutionise the Nigerians sports scene. The festival, which begins on March 22, will not only take Nigeria into the comity of digitalized sports nations, it would also mark the beginning of the change the country’s sportsmen and officials have been yearning for.

Apart from the revolutionary security network put in place for the event, Edo 2020 National Sports Festival will for the first time show Nigerians how the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) works from close quarters.

The Edo 2020 National Sports Festival begins on March 22.

Speaking after an inspection tour of the facilities at the rebuilt Sam Ogbemudia Stadium, Benin on Tuesday, Edo State Deputy Governor Phillip Shaibu said the state was doing everything possible to ensure that games met international standards, adding that the participants will get a first-hand experience of some of the facilities they will encounter at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Edo 2020 festival.

Earlier, one of the workers in the VAR Room, Chinedu Agbo had briefed the governor and his entourage on the workings of the VAR cameras, which, he said, could also capture happenings outside the stadium.

“The high resolution cameras inside the VAR Room have a capacity that can capture activities five kilometers within the stadium. So, it invariably means that the VAR technology at the Samuel Ogbemudia Stadium is amongst the best anywhere in the world,” Agbo stated.

Musa Ebomhiana, the Chief Press Secretary to the Edo State Deputy Governor, said the introduction of VAR for the upcoming festival was a sign that the state was ready to host the best Games ever in the country.

“The VAR is the only one in Nigeria and the third in Africa. But while the one in Morocco is collapsible, ours is permanently there. It’s the same company that installed the VAR technology in Morocco that also did ours. It’s a landmark achievement in Nigerian sports and we are happy,” Ebomhiana said.

Last November, Morocco made history as the first African country to apply the VAR technology in an African domestic match for the first time.

VAR was earlier used at the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt from the quarterfinal stages. (The Guardian)

•PHOTO: VAR 

Source Daily Sports

Posted March 7, 2020

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