With only three days before the commencement of the MoC Relays, Nigeria’s foremost Sports Management and Media firm – Making of Champions Limited (MoC) – have announced leading payments & mobile money company Paga as lead sponsor of the event slated to hold on Sunday, June 27th at the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, Nigeria.
Following the great success of previous Olympic qualifying competitions such as the BetKing/3rd MoC Grand Prix in March and AFN/MoC Invitational in May 2021, the Paga/MoC Relays seeks to enable Relay & Individual Athletes from across Nigeria and all over Africa qualify for the Olympics.
This partnership comes at a timely fashion for Nigerian Athletics especially after the much anticipated African Championships initially slated for the end of June in Nigeria was cancelled, putting the Olympic qualification for Nigeria’s 5 Relay Teams in jeopardy.
At the Paga/MoC Relays, all 5 Olympic Relay Events (Men’s & Women’s 4x100m and Men’s, Women’s & Mixed 4x4x00m) will all be featured, giving Team Nigeria’s 5 Relay Teams and indeed other National Relay Teams from across Africa one final big opportunity to snap up the final qualification spots in the Olympic Relays! Already, Athletes/Teams from 10 different countries across Africa (including Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Benin, Togo, Cameroon and of course Nigeria) have already indicated interest in participating at the Event.
Speaking on the sponsorship, MoC Founder & CEO Bambo Akani said: “We are happy to welcome Paga as lead sponsor for the MoC Relays. Paga is easily Nigeria’s biggest mobile payments brand and their decision to support the MoC Relays underlines their commitment to creating tangible and sustainable connections for millions of Nigerians who trust Paga with their money.”
Also commenting on the sponsorship, Paga’s Founder & CEO, Tayo Oviosu said, “At Paga, we advocate for a fun and fit environment for our young staff, and when the opportunity to sponsor MoC Relays which is focused at giving young athletes the opportunity to reach for the stars came up, we jumped at it. Our very essence is ‘making life possible’, and the lives of many athletes have been on hold due to the pandemic. So it is very impressive to say the least that MoC has been able to gather these athletes from at least 10 countries in Africa to make their dreams come true. We at Paga are definitely rooting for the Nigeria team that qualifies to bring back some medals”.
As with the previous MoC-organised competitions, all the results at the MoC Relays would be ratified by the Athletics Federation of Nigeria and recognized globally by World Athletics for Athletes to qualify for major global championships such as the Olympics.
