Kaduna to host Nigeria  Volleyball Premier League

The Nigeria Volleyball Federation (NVBF) has announced that the proposed Volleyball Premier League will be held in Kaduna state between November 1st to 10th, 2018 reports www.totorinews.com.

The President of the Federation, Engineer Musa Nimrod told the sporting press that the league suffered several postponements earlier due to the hosting of the U21 Africa Men’s Nation’s Cup in Abuja.

Nimrod said that the league was earlier scheduled to hold this October, but had to be postponed to November due to the preliminaries games of teams ahead of the 2018 National Sports Festival in Abuja to begin late November .

• He lamented that the league was moved to Kaduna by the League Management Committee due to lack of sponsor and to reduce the cost of running the league.

“The Volleyball Federation is yet to get a sponsor for the league. The Premier League competition  had to be moved out from Abuja to Kaduna by the League Management Committee because of cost reduction”. Engr. Nimrod said.

He added : “We have put plans on the way and all things being equal, the league should be back next month. We never planned to postpone the league but Nigeria had to host the rest of Africa in the men’s U21 Championship which was commended by the Confederation of Africa Volleyball, the Zonal eliminations of the National Sports Festival in October amongst others.”

“We have recorded resounding progresses but there are still much to be done. I’m aware most teams are waiting for the Premier League to resume and the organisers promised not to let the expectations of the people down.

“We must stop focusing 100 per cent on the senior national teams which end up putting pressure on the team. We want to increase the interests of Nigerians in the league than the national teams”, he said.

Nimrod  who is very passionate about the development of Volleyball in Nigeria said that the league will play a tremendous impact  on the development of the sport at the grassroots level across the country and he hopes that lovers of volleyball will have something to cheer in Kaduna.

“Getting the league right would mean total transformation of Nigerian volleyball from the grassroots to the national level. The league will drive all volleyball  developments in this country. If we fix league, it will change many things because it is an economy on its own.

 “Our target is to bring over 2, 000 Nigerians to the stadium in everyday. Nigerians are gradually beginning to love the game volleyball again after our successful performance at the Africa Youth Games, the U20 girls and the recently concluded U21 Men’s Africa Championships”, he said.