Edo Deputy Governor, Philip Shaibu, on Wednesday, says the Okpekpe 10km road race would be institutionalised and nobody can stop the existence of the race.

Shaibu stated this at a press conference ahead of the 8th edition of the Okpekpe 10 km Road Race in Etsako East Local Government Area.

According to him, “All the doubting Thomas’s should be rest assured that Okpekpe race has come to stay and it is real, nobody can stop it, not even me Philip Shaibu, can stop it.

“It’s something that has come to stay. We have a discussion with the organizers, we agreed that we have to institutionalise the race and the process is on, to enable the game live after us.

“Edo government will continue to support the race, we have agreed that the prize money and other logistics that we used in assisting the race would still be given and there were other areas that we have assured to partner with the organizers of the race.

“I also want to join to apologize to our athletes that it was not our fault, since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and we have to follow international best practices, because the game is not a local game, it is an international race.

“We are struggling to put everything in place to make sure that we quickly get our gold label after that our target is to be a platinum race. We are cautiously making efforts to make sure that we put all that is needed to achieve our aim in making Okpekpe race a platinum race on the athletics calendar.

“The potentials of this race cannot be over emphasised, Okpekpe has great tourism value and economic value too, it will enable us showcase our infrastructural development.

“For us in Edo, we are ready to host the Okpekpe 10km road race, we are going to take the issue of doping very serious in this race, we have always maintained integrity and we have always insisted that any athlete that wants to participate should come clean.

“We are putting all the medical facilities in place to make sure we deal with it. We would be doing a rapid test for all the officials and athletes that will be participating”, he said.

Earlier, the organiser of the Okpekpe 10 km Road Race, Mike Itemuagbor, assured that the Okpekpe road race was a reality and we should disregard all that was going on in the social media saying that the deputy governor was against hosting the race.

“I know that we have seen some social media posts stating that the deputy governor was against it, I want to say here that if there is anybody that is against it, they are the organizers, not government of Edo who, as a matter of fact, have always had the race in their programmes every year.

“In some instance the governor himself had called, if you are not going to have the race can we have a press statement from your office, in some instance the deputy governor had said for us to trust our press release come to Benin for us to have conference together, we have always be dodging them.

“The reason we have not be able to host this race for the past two years is that the COVID-19 pandemic had no respect for anybody, and as much as we want to promote good health, it’s not our intention to compromise the health of runners and the good people of Edo”, he said.

NAN