BY VICTOR OSOWOCHI – Driven by the motivation to ensure skaters enjoy reasonable earnings from their passion, a coalition of roller skating partners are putting together an event tagged “Fast and Famous Skating Championship” to promote the sport in Nigeria.
As a sport or pastime, the Africa Roller Championship is being packaged for skaters to ultimately compete among themselves with a mouth-watering grand prize at stake.
According to the Fast and Famous Team (FFT), organisers of the event, for the first time in Nigeria, “we bring a sporting activity that will financially empower/build capacity and employment spectators whose intrinsic passion has been but more of football.”
They also explained that the competition is offering brands one out-of-the-box avenue to reach its corporate objectives’ Eldorado devoid of the usual intense and expensive campaigns.
Already, roller skaters from around Lagos and its environs were made to feature in a pre-event ceremony on Saturday, October 23, 2021, as part of awareness creation and preparation for the real championship slated for the end of this year.
The FFT described the Lagos event as a forerunner in creating awareness among lovers of skating and opening their eyes to the fact that they can actually build a career as well as earn a living in roller-skating.
“Today, we gathered as many skaters as we could, made them compete against each other, just to prepare their minds for what they will experience when the real championship takes place later this year. If you take a walk on the streets of Nigeria and even some African countries, you will notice that we have a lot of youths taking up skating as either a passion or a career.
“These ones need to be encouraged to make a living out of this passion of theirs. They stand the chances of getting mouth watery contracts by attending this skater’s championship, tagged ‘Fast and Famous’, as international scouts and managers, will be in full attendance, to seek out talents.“
The Africa Roller Championship document cited by Forefront indicates that the Championship comes with the incentives of helping to reduce human capital waste; crime; prostitution; and restiveness among the youth populace.
Hinting on “education and entertainment as the lifeblood that will transform the championship to a way of life, culture, and tradition”, the document further said the organisers are focused on breeding Champions; Role Models; Superstar celebrities; Media icons; Millionaires; and Ambassadors…outside of football.
