The ECOWAS Task Force of the Regional Coordinating Committee of the West African Public Service Games (WAPSGA) is galvanizing stakeholders towards hosting a successful sporting fiesta in Nigeria in 2017.

ECOWAS has been in the process of developing an innovative community sport for about five years so as to use sports as a veritable vehicle of creating social harmony and beneficial engagement amongst the peoples of West Africa.

Declaring the two-Day meeting open on the 1^st of December 2016, in Abuja, the ECOWAS Commissioner, Social Affairs and Gender who was represented by the Director, ECOWAS Youth and Sports Development Centre (EYSDC), Francis Njoaguani, urged stakeholders to help create a positive image for west Africa and change the perception of the region to that of a thriving, harmonious collection of peoples.

According to the Commissioner, WAPSGA is one of the noble sporting events which stakeholders are meant to use in galvanizing people to become a productive and active force of integration and development.

She noted that EOWAS expects all to become strong and resolute in ensuring that all obstacles are cleared towards the successful hosting of the games in Nigeria in 2017.

The Commissioner stressed that the enhancement of sport and its professional elevation has driven many young people to take to it and finding it thereafter as a source of employment with the creation of decent jobs. She reasoned that the frightening unemployment level in the region can be tackled when WAPSGA games gain meaningful foothold.

In her remarks, the ECOWAS Director, Gender, Youth, civil society, employment and drug control Dr. Sintiki Ugbe said WAPSGA is a practical step to providing a platform for public servants to interact, share and exchange social and cultural values thereby enhancing the regional integration agenda of ECOWAS in conformity with the ECOWAS vision 2020 which seeks to navigate from ECOWAS of States to an ECOWAS of people.

Dr. Ugbe who was represented by the principal Porgramme Officer, Daniel Akwasi Amankwaah, agreed with the Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General on sports Wilfried Lembe, who posited that “No other social activity brings people together in such great numbers, with so much passion and enjoyment as sports. Regardless of age, gender, an ethnicity, sports is enjoyed by all, its reach is unrivalled”

She said it was the same egalitarian reason why an American philosopher, William James had called for the “creation of a moral equivalent of war” as something that enhances a person’s discipline, hardiness and self- sacrifice.

In alignment with this noble cause, she said the ECOWAS Directorate of Gender has made it one of its priorities to bring all member countries together through sports as a way to foster cooperation.

In order to sustain the momentum of progress made in the development and organization of the WAPSGA, a regional consultation on the establishment of the national federations of the West African Public Service Games was held earlier in Abuja, Nigeria. The meeting was organized with the primary objective of mobilizing and acquainting participants from the public services of ECOWAS Member States, with information on the rules and regulations of the West African Public Service Games, and to build their capacities on the establishment of the National Federations of the Games.

Delegates at the meeting are appraising among others, the progress report of the organization of WAPSGA as well as what has been made by Member States, strategic partnerships and resource base, resource mobilization strategy, budget and funding as well as review of road map for the games.