Ambassador Henry George, President of Dynamite Fighting Championship, DFC Africa, in an exclusive interview with Africa Update unveils the biggest mixed martial arts in West Africa.
Excerpts
Question: May we meet you Sir?
Response: My names are Ambassador Henry George, President of Dynamite Fighting Championship, DFC Africa. We are a carbon copy of UFC of America and EFC of South Africa. We are the biggest mixed martial arts promotion in West Africa.
We have introduced mixed martial arts to Nigeria. Our aim is to upgrade our fighters to have them ranked in the world. We are also looking at ensuring that our fighters do not have difficulties in world ranking. So we provide that platform for them to showcase their talents and also be branded as stars in combat. So, that is what you gain.
Question 2: Now let’s come back to Rivers State, where we have the sports institute at Isaka. We just saw the branding and refurbishing of the Alfred DIete Spiff Sports Complex. In your view, how would you rate the impact of sports on youths?
Response: Yes, that is what we are addressing. We believe that the government is very far from the original design of sports. Sport is actually the tool. It remains the tool for social and economic development. It remains a tool for bringing the youths together. To have them mentored, have that discipline on how they live their lives. To give them core values and so it becomes very difficult except when you see some youths going into crime.
So having a sports institute just like you have in Lagos, the National Institute of Sports, you discover that most of our coaches are idle because for you to have good athletes you need good coaches. They need to understand the anatomy and physiology of athletics. They need to understand and get the training programme.
If an athlete is not well trained definitely he is not going to make a good athlete. So, having an institute here in Port Harcourt is a welcome development because our people will find it very easy to train than spending so much to go to Lagos.
So, it is good that government is looking closely to sports these days like the Alfred Diete Spiff Sports Complex, I can say that it is up to international standard because I think it is the biggest here in our region. So it is a welcome development.
Question 3: You said something about sports being a tool to reducing violence amongst youths. What would you recommend in this regard to achieve this rather than have structures that don’t have any impact?
Response: Yes that is what we are doing in DFC Africa. We want to go back to the drawing table. We want to remind government on where they should go. If you look at the sports sector, you see that there are no programmes which sports uses as a kind of campaign against drugs, cultism. Campaigning against all these!
Because it is the youths that get involved in all these social vices. So sports is also something you can use to communicate to these youths, because like combat sports which we are focusing on, transcends age barrier, transcends race barrier, transcends gender barriers, so we can actually have a lot of people pass our message through combat sports to a lot of people, you know condemn some of these social odds.
You know talking about cultism, talking about drug which is a major problem in Nigeria that is what the government is supposed to be doing. They are supposed to be having programmes like this where the youths can have someone in their ecosystem who is easy to relate with. Having to see this person become a model, become a star and you know that he is from the same ecosystem , so it is easy for them to relate and they will pass the message directly to them and discourage them from going into drugs, cultism and all that.
Question 4: Finally, you recently had a programme in Port Harcourt. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Response: Yes, it was a celebration of our own heroes. That is why it was tagged Legions of Heroes because in this part of the world, we have a lot of champions. You know we are talking about not only when our fighters go outside Nigeria that they make name, we are talking about the likes of Anthony Joshua, so many of them, they are just there.
And you can see that the government is talking about reducing the rate of migration, people who travel outside Nigeria, wanting to trek from Nigeria to Libya and all that. You know we need to replicate those things they are going outside there to do.
So, we need to put them here, like sports. Combat sports a lot of people believe that when they leave this country, that they are going to make it because we don’t have such platforms. We don’t have a promotional, provisional and professional platform that they can showcase their skills and may be given various offers such as brand ambassador and endorsements.
We are trying to create that platform for athletes to be recognized and also put in their talents through the eyes of the camera so that people can see how good Nigerian athletes have become. So these international investors can come into Nigeria and invest and these guys can also make a living out of their career.
