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One of the opening matches of the Higher Institutions Football League (HIFL) took place last Wednesday at University of Port Harcourt’s football field, with UNIPORT’s football team, Sharks, clinching a 3 – 2 victory over hard fighting Delta State University’s Titans.
Speaking at the pre-match briefing before the game between Sharks of UNIPORT and Titans of DELSU, the representative of Pace Sports Marketing and Entertainment Limited, Patrick Nwaoze said the aim of the football league is to promote and develop sports, most especially football in Nigerian universities.
He said that in recent times, sports in the universities is gradually going down, that the introduction of the football league would help discover talents and awaken the spirit of sports in the students.
“Our aim is basically to promote and develop sports in our universities, most especially to discover football talents that can represent the country at any level,” Nwaoze said.
Director of Sports, Delta State University (DELSU), Achugbue Tony, said the league was designed to unify students and also to showcase talents in universities campuses across the country.
He noted that 16 top Nigerian universities are participating in the first edition from the National Universities Games Association (NUGA), adding that HIFL is different from NUGA, because the league is annually, while NUGA is bi-annual.
The Nigeria, Higher Institutions Football League (HiFL) is organised by Pace Sports and Entertainment Marketing in partnership with the Nigerian Universities Games Association (NUGA). HiFL is sponsored by Stanbic IBTC with Green White Green (GWG) Sports Centre Limited as Technical Consultants.
The competition which is endorsed by the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) and recognized by the National Universities Council (NUC) is divided along the Sahel (North) and Coastal (South) conferences for reasons of proximity and effective administration.
The top 16 Universities from NUGA-member institutions play 30 games over a period of 14 weeks in a return leg elimination style, with the final four billed for the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos. The winner of HIFL will represent Nigeria at the 2019 International University Sports Federation games in Naples, Italy.
