Onoriode Kelvin Akpe, is the Director General of the Bayelsa Governor’s Cup, otherwise known as Prosperity Cup. His involvement in grassroots football talent hunting and development over the last nine years, has yielded tremendous results. Akpe has been the brain behind Bayelsa State Governor’s cup Tournament, where several young talents discovered are already playing professional football in different leagues across Nigeria, Africa, Europe and other parts of the world. In this interview with selected journalists, including Daily Newshub correspondent, the talent hunter bares his mind on the achievements so far, the talents discovered, other plans and issues of public interest.
Excerpts:
*You conceived the idea of Bayelsa Governor’s Cup in 2015. Nine years after, how has it been?*
First, I want to thank the Lord Almighty for this vision to organise the Bayelsa Governor’s Cup. We actually tried to put it together in 2014, but we couldn’t. We finally hosted it in 2015. It was borne out of the resolve of government appointees to involve in physical
activities. At a stage, we realised that the passion which we exhibited and was supported by the youths of Bayelsa State, was the enormous passion and skills that abound in the state. We believed that these talents were going to waste if not properly harnessed. So, I and others came together and put this tournament together to see how it would help to engage our youths in football talent development; so we put our own resources together to kick-start it and after we started the activities, we got the buy in of the government. Governor of
Bayelsa State then, Senator Seriake Dickson, supported us and we started the first edition in Nembe, because Sampson Siasia stadium was under renovation at that time. Since then, the competition has been very interesting, very exciting but equally very challenging because the more the tournament grows, the more the issues.
*Nine years after, what have been the results achieved with the Governor’s Cup, in terms of talents discovery?*
I will use this opportunity to go through a small trajectory of the tournament. First, after the 2015 edition, we had the 2016 edition and the 2018 edition and then 2019 edition, which was the most successful, because then Minister of Sports, Sunday Dare came in and was invited as a special guest in the final. When he saw the participation of the youth teams, he described it as a ‘largest grassroots football tournament’ which has been a name that has stuck to the tournament. It is a largest football tournament in Nigeria and in Africa with the number of teams that have registered for it. In that edition, we sent a select team of players to Cape Verde, African Youths Cup and that team came third in the whole of Africa. That was an enviable feat, that team came back and we kept them in camp and they eventually played Bayelsa League Cup and against all odds, they beat all fancied teams to
emerge winners. So, that really encouraged us to know that youths of Bayelsa have lots of talents to be developed and propelled to greater heights and so we continued with it in the new administration of
Senator Douye Diri, and I must really commended the governor who was a commissioner for sports in the previous administration, for his unrivaled commitment to the development of sports, especially football and the Prosperity Cup. When he came in, he first sent for me and asked about the arrangement for the tournament and I briefed him, and he said he was interested to ensure that more youths of Bayelsa are developed and propelled to greater heights in their chosen career. Then we started to build the tournament around talent discovery and pushing the discovered talents to greater heights; that is why coaching talents scouting programmes were further expanded and developed to ensure we get the best for our youths. You’ll recall that even from the 2015 edition, you have exciting players like Okardi, who was our most valuable player. His team won the pioneer cup and he went on to play for other teams before going abroad. He is in France now playing professional football. We have Nestor, who is in Bosnia. We have quite a lot of others abroad. So that trajectory coming to this administration, so we have some scouting programmes, we have scouts from all over Europe and even Africa, including South Africa, coming to scout our players and we have seen quite a bit of success in that. So, our players are there in Europe, we have some in Egypt, we have some in West Coast. In fact, there is a core team of Bayelsa United that is made up of talents from this tournament, and one of the most prolific scorers in Bayelsa United, Basil was one of the players we discovered from Brass team. The Bayelsa United team is primarily made up of identified talents from this competition.
So, we must say that our talent discovery process has yielded a great number of dividends and fruits. The last edition, we were equally blest to have the NFF president and his board in attendance, they saw exciting football which is favourably compared to the NPFL in the final match, and I must say that the final match was so interesting that the most valuable player of the tournament, Akpos Godbless and the highest goal scorer, Junior Christopher were immediately scouted, spotted and signed by the Bendel Insurance. So, that was one exciting thing for the
last edition.
*What about the scouting programmes?*
In the past few years, we have also organised various scouting programmes alongside the tournament. In 2022, we hosted Gregory Paul of ASPIRE Football Academy from France, Passi Gerald of Olympique Marseille, Thembele of South Africa and a team from FDC VISTA Academy Russia, including; Nikita, Poliakov, Dimitri Churkin, National team coach, Kennedy Boboye and Imama Amapakabo, amongst others. In 2023, the LOC sponsored two teams of 40 players and officials to participate in international scouting tournaments organised by SPOCS, a German sports firm, at Remo Academy in Ikenne and Abuja. We also organised two scouting programmes in Yenagoa with teams from the South-South and South-East participating. A total of 10 players have been selected for professional football abroad. Two players are presently engaged in the SPOCS Academy in Gambia and two others are billed to sign juicy contracts in the premier league in England.
A number of players have been scouted from this competition and now play in different clubs all over the country. In Bayelsa United, about seven players are currently there with the team. The likes of Gabriel Biriduba, Bob Philip, Monday Bassey and Biweribo Tarabina – Vice Captain of the team and Christian Mizo who only recently moved to Al Hilal in Libya, all featured in the competition. Junior Christopher and Akpos Godbless, the highest goal scorer and MVP of the 2023 edition, respectively, now play for Bendel Insurance, while Endurance Ebedebiri plays for Rivers United. The likes of Egah Saviour, Prince Ebiobowei, Onyesom Precious, Bright Peremene and others who have gone abroad, equally played in the previous editions.
*How have you been able to manage this tournament?*
The tournament started in 2015 with 110 teams; now we have over 200 teams that are playing. Last year, we introduced the female and para-soccer editions. So, we now have three tournaments in one, the female edition started with just four teams last year, now we have over 20 registered teams in the tournament which is equally another impressive development which I’m proud of. In both female and male editions, we have depth of talents in the state that are clearly well harnessed and will be able to do great things for the state in terms of professional career in football. Of course, from the last edition, we begin to see some other females discovered talents being invited to Bayelsa Queens and other clubs that they are plying their trades, and we hope that this year, more will be discovered and developed to ply their trades in football. This year, we also introduced another novelty; that is the local government finals and in all the local government we went to, we saw great talents.
*Do you consider introducing age grade competition into the tournament, maybe for U13 or U14?*
First and foremost, the basic idea of this tournament is for community development and interaction, to make sure there is inter-community
engagement, there is peace and tranquility, there is relationship between various communities in the state, and because of that focus, we have teams from various states of the country who are resident here partaking in the tournament. So, with that, we did not instill an age grade process, because we want everybody who is interested in playing football at the community level to play. However, our talent hunt process is to discover the youths of Bayelsa from the ages of 14, 15, 16 to the ages of 21. But while the tournament is going on, our focused is discovering young talents, and we try to ensure that the teams have such age-grade players. Russian group came into Bayelsa two years ago for talent scouting, but now, we are having the ones between 18 and 21. By 1st of July 2024, ten international scouts, eight from Europe, two from Nigeria, are coming for scouting programmes to identify talents and see as many they can take. So, if ten scouts come here from Turkey, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Holland, etc, if they come here and see our talents, with what we have, there is no how we cannot have five or six players taken away from the state to play professional football abroad.
What are the exciting things that you observed in the ongoing edition
compared to the previous editions?
We have talked about the three editions in one that we have here presently. Based on the pressure to enhance the capacity and skills of
our players and officials, we introduced the referee course. That was done in May. We brought in international referee facilitators and accessors from the Referees’ Council to Yenagoa to organise a refresher course for the referees preparing them for the tournament. They sharpened their brains in the recent updates in refereeing and football; it was very exciting, it has greatly improved the quality of officiating in these tournaments. Secondly, apart from a scouting
programme, we have introduced a coaching clinic. We did it last year,
it was very small but this year, we’ll make it big. We have international scouts and licensed coaches coming from Europe and they are going to put our coaches through two days of the classroom workshop and equally on the field here. They will do something like that, so the one on grassroots coaches is one of the most exciting because we have a lot of coaches who on their own are forging on. They are developing their
skills, they are making sure things are going on well for them. But one of the things these international coaches are coming to do is to
help them develop themselves on football management, team
management, team relationship, etc. We are having a basic coaching clinic for them, and that will start from 1st July, 2024; we will start with 50 coaches.
*The ongoing edition is about entering round 32, how is the tournament going?*
In the round of 32 which is going to come up in another few days, we have very exciting teams that have qualified. We have two teams from each local government that qualified but Yenagoa is having eight centres. They have about 16 teams that will go into round of 32; so they will slug it out until they get to the round of 16, then the final which has been proposed for the 19th of July, depending on the availability of our special guests.
*Looking at the future, how do you intend to see this tournament?*
Prosperity Cup has turned into a brand. It is a brand that is known globally now. We got calls from Europe, from UK, from Germany, in fact, we have a preposition to take our players to Ghana in a tournament organized by German organization this year. We also have preposition to select some players and take them to Portugal. So, all these things are on the cards and the table. But we are looking out for a time when we will have a brand sponsor that will take over the sponsorship of this tournament, without government putting any reasonable resources,
maybe just the trophy and prize money. We are looking for the brand sponsor that will take up the bills and make sure that youths of Bayelsa pull of the streets and begin to be gainfully engaged, because this tournament has a lifespan of almost six months. So, we will like to call on the corporate world, the oil multinational companies to key into this tournament to engage our youths. But with the promise of Governor Douye Diri, who has given us all the support, we think that we should have at least ten community fields developed, which he has promised, at least one in every local government area, because if the players play in a very standard field, their level will increase, which is a very good sign. So, once you have these ten community fields, you can imagine what happened in these fields every evening or early in the morning. You have people running, doing athletics, playing football, basketball, doing aerobics and weightlifting. You
will discover that in every community field, you will have over 200 people engaged daily; that means you are taking 200 youths off the streets. We also want to see our players in national teams, Super Eagles, Flying Eagles and the Golden Eaglets. So. this is what we are trying to do; to develop our players to feature in local and international clubs. These are the visions of this project. Last year, two of our players went abroad. One was signed in by Nottingham Forest
for a trial, we believe by this summer we should have feedback on his acceptance. We are really excited and believe the best is yet to come for Prosperity Cup and Bayelsa Governor’s Cup.
