How sport can deepen peaceful, inclusive societies

Kids trying out their skills with the round-leather game.

Over the years, countries, organisations and groups have used sport to achieve some socio-economic goals. In some countries, sport, which is big business and great employer of labour, also serves as a nation-building tool deployed to enhance national unity and peaceful co-existence. GOWON AKPODONOR writes that such is the power of sport that the United Nations declared April 6 every year as the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace.

One of the most memorable moments in Nigeria’s history was in 1969, during the Civil War. The date was February 4, 1969, when the late king of football, Pele, achieved a momentary ceasefire in the three-year war, which had then claimed over a million lives.

It was in the midst of that period that the Brazilian football giants, Santos, landed in Benin City to face a Mid-Western State side and the soldiers agreed to drop their weapons in honour of the Great Pele, who was visiting Africa for the first time as a peace ambassador.

According to one of Pele’s former teammates, Ramos Delgado, the war stopped for the game to go ahead because “Pele’s power was incredible.”

US magazine TIME reported back in 2005 that the Nigerian government and the Republic of Biafra accepted a three-day ceasefire. “Although diplomats and emissaries had tried in vain for two years to stop the fighting in what was then Africa’s bloodiest civil war, the 1969 arrival in Nigeria of Brazilian soccer legend Pele brought a three-day ceasefire,” said the TIME article.

“Both the government and the breakaway Republic of Biafra accepted a truce to allow his team, Santos, to play two matches against local teams. For 72 hours, football was more important than war.”