Most football followers of the GTBank Principals’ Cup look forward to see Stephen Odey perform this weekend as Nigeria take on South Africa in one of the opening group stages of the qualifying series for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations.
Stephen Odey, a forward of Lagos MFM, has been fantastic this football season and is the lead scorer in the Nigerian league. He remains the biggest product of the GTBank Lagos Principals’ Cup which eighth edition has just been concluded.
Stephen Odey played for and captained Dairy Farm Senior Secondary School to victory in the 2012 edition. There have been other exceptional players who have emerged from the GTBank Principals Cup as new champions continue to emerge.
Such new champions are. Ijaiye Housing Estate Senior Grammar School, Ojokoro which won the male category of 2017 which is the Season 8 since GTBank took over the title sponsorship.
Isale Eko Grammar School, Lagos Island, emerged champions in the girls’ category at the final matches played at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Lagos.
Ayodeji Tinubu, the Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor on Sports and also the Chairman of Lagos State Sports Commission, who was at the final match of this year’s edition which also significantly served as the football event of the celebration of Lagos State at 50, remarked that the partnership with GTBank on the Principals Cup has been fantastic.
“Year in year out, the partnership continues to get stronger”, Deji Tinubu remarked. Considering that none of the four finalist schools had made it to that stage since the commencement of organized schools’ football in Lagos in 1948, Segun Agbaje, the MD/CEO of Guaranty Trust Bank plc, was thrilled as the 2017 competition opened new opportunities.
Ahead of the final matches, he stated: “We are delighted to see schools aiming for their first ever trophies in this competition;
“It emphasizes the growing stature of the GTBank-Lagos State Principals Cup as a platform for the cultivation of dreams through hard work and discipline.”
He further stated that “When these young talents go on to accomplish many great goals in their lives, they will look back on this competition as the time when they first gained the courage to dare, and built the will to win.”
Guaranty Trust Bank plc is a foremost Nigerian financial institution that has maintained a defined Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy since its inception in 1990. The Bank actively supports in-classroom and out-of-classroom educational programmes, infrastructure development, students’ scholarship and teachers training across Africa.
Agbaje also remarked that GTBank embarked on the Lagos Principals Cup project to further project sports as tool to create good habit in people. “It creates discipline so that they can achieve success in different facets of their lives”.