SWAN President’s death huge loss, official says

The death of Ahmed Aigbona, the President of Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN), is a huge loss to sports development in Nigeria, the Association’s Secretary-General, Mike Oboh, says. Oboh told sports journalists in Abuja on Tuesday that Aigbona’s death was not just a loss to his family or National SWAN but the Nigerian sports family as a whole.

“It is a terrible loss that many of us in the Association will take long to recover from. But it goes beyond SWAN, it affects the whole Nigerian sports family“. “In Aigbona we have lost a dogged fighter, decent human being and a real and hard working sports journalist,” he said. The SWAN Secretary-General said the Association’s National Executive Committee (NEC), now being led in the interim by Deputy President Ado Salisu, had been battling to come to terms with Aigbona’s demise.

“The news was devastating when it came on Sunday“. “For somebody who was still vibrant as at noon that day, dealing with several matters regarding SWAN through phone calls and text messages to many of his NEC members and other SWAN members, we were hit very hard“. But, more than what we in SWAN will feel with this great loss is the fact that his family would be missing a loving husband, father, brother and son.

“And beyond this, the entire Nigerian sports family will be missing someone whose love for sports was so enormous and strong, who was day and night toiling to ensure our sports terrain gets better,” Oboh said. He said the SWAN NEC would soon come up with some announcement on crucial issues regarding the Association.

Aigbona, a former Chairman of Edo State SWAN and member of the Edo State Football Association, was elected SWAN National President on October 7 in 2019 in Abuja. Supreme reports that Aigbona who died on Sunday in Benin after a short illness was born on June 7, 1973.He was survived by, among several others, his wife, brother, sister and mother.