NMA President commends FCT chapter for successfully organising 6th Doctors’ Games

Innocent Ujah, President of the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), praised the association’s FCT Zone for successfully hosting the sixth edition of the NMA Medical Games in Abuja on Saturday.

Ujah told reporters after the games’ closing ceremony that the commendation was necessary because the FCT zone received short notice to organize and host this year’s edition.

“The event was previously scheduled to be held in Kaduna state, but due to insecurity reasons it was moved to Abuja.

“However, it has been well organized despite the short notice given to our FCT zone,” he said.

The NMA president later attributed this to the fact that “doctors are versatile in whatever domain they find themselves in.”

Some players during the NMA Games

He went on to describe the performances at the games as a demonstration of the fact that Nigerian doctors should not always be in the hospital.

“We should go out and do any sport of our choice, otherwise most of our activities will be restricted whether it be in the delivery room, consultation room or emergency unit.

“We can keep fit through sports activities.

“For example, the final match of the soccer event between the Southeast and FCT zones showed that doctors are versatile, that we can do sports in the same way that we can treat patients,” said Ujah.

He lamented the fact that COVID-19 kept the association’s activities very low and said it caused a lack of sponsorship that hampered preparations for this year’s competition.

“We are a determined association. Despite the challenge of lack of funds, we stuck to ourselves to organize this competition”, said the NMA president.

Also speaking, Uche Ojimah, Chairman of the NMA Sports Committee, noted that this year’s sports competition was better than 2020.

“I can proudly say that this year’s event is better, the standard has improved and the standard is very high. We have almost 600 athletes in this event, compared to 2020 when we had 400 athletes,” he said.

Ojimah then called on the Federal Ministry of Health and its counterpart Youth Development and Sport to initiate a “healthcare workers’ day”.

“There should be a day of health workers to dissipate the tension in the health sector. We ask the Federal Ministry of Health and the Federal Ministry for Youth Development and Sport to organize a health workers’ day.

“They should call on other health workers to come together and play sports together.

“We need to play together, laugh together to make health workers happy,” he said.

For his part, Enema Amodu, president of the NMA FCT chapter, said he was happy that they had an exciting competition.

“We have the facilities here at the FCT and we were able to deploy our resources on the human side to make sure we reach this level of excellence.

“The athletes have done well since we are second in the medal table, and the biggest goal achieved is that we have been able to come together to have fun.

“The goal of the event now is to let it grow to a certain level so that we can get other health workers involved,” he said.

The Nigerian News Agency ( ) reports that 10 sporting events are featured in the 6th edition of the NMA Doctors Games, namely Ladies, Table Tennis, Ayo, Athletics, Badminton, Volleyball, Basketball, Golf, Tennis and soccer.

Below is the final medal table from the VI NMA Physician Games:

Team Gold Silver Bronze Total

South South 13 9 8 30

Lakes 9 10 3 22

HR 5 7 9 21

Southeast 4 2 12 18

Southwest 5 3 5 13

North Center 2 4 3 9

Northwest 1 4 6 11

Northeast 1 1 8 10

TOTALS 40 40 54 134

reports that the competition that started on Tuesday ended on Saturday.