ROLL MODELS

In football, Pele came from a humble home in Tres Coracores in Brazil but today he is a monument of all ages, in the round leather game. Diego Maradona, a skinny boy who played for the cebollittoes (the little onions) who was even rejected by his former coaches is today a role model. Lionel Messi, our own Kanu Nwankwo, Jay-Jay Okocha, all in football are reference points today. In athletics, Mary Onyeali-Omagbemi, Falilat Ogunkoya-Oshekun, Christy Oparah-Thompson, Gloria Alozie, Francis Obikwelu, Sunday Bada, my humble self, great Ambassadors of Nigeria too numerous to mention, came from different backgrounds, but were able to do our best for the country because we were inspired to become something, not only for our country but for ourselves too.

It is this role model effect that was actually our main inner strength to reach the pinnacle of our career. We will encourage the youths of today in both sports and other aspects of their lives, while our foundation provides the fireworks needed to extinguish the mentality of impossibility and mental docility in their lives. We will beam searchlights into the ways and means of achieving this and supremely impact the youths so that they will find enough reasons to excel in lieu of complaining, murmuring, antagonizing and laden with the excuse mentality that is a reproach to excelling in life and indeed, any endeavor one set to achieving. We are out to challenge the inner strengths and ready-made opinions of our youths that god-fatherism, cheating, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution and drug abuse are not the only option left for reaching the heights of success. With a package that knows nothing like impossibility and immune to the mentality of failure. The Foundation is on the verge of re-writing the history of wasted talents and human capacity in both sports and other endeavors. Nigeria’s role models will be one package that will inspire and empower our sporting and other talents to excel, as our foundation designs new role models for the good of the world…Nigeria in particular.