Patrick-Estate Onyedum, Chairman of Anambra Sports Development Commission (ASDC), on Friday in Enugu, said  1,500 schools would participate in this year`s school sports festival in the state.

Onyedum stated this at the inauguration of the Local Organising Committees (LOC) for Local Government Areas, including representatives of Area Education Officers and Post Primary Service Commission.

Others are Universal Basic Education Board and Sports Commission Officers.

He said that about 600 schools participated in the 2023 edition.

The chairman called on sports officers at the Local Government Area level to mobilise massively ahead of the festival schedule for April 17.

The chairman said that the 2023 edition was a huge success but not without lessons, assuring that lapses observed would be addressed.

He said that Gov. Chukwuma Soludo of Anambra was committed to the development of discovered talents and the sports sector.

“The festival is going to be bigger and an improvement over the previous edition, we hope that more talents will be discovered this time.

“You can now go to work, mobilise the schools in your community and local government areas.

“Ensure that no school is left out, at least we should have not less than 1,500 schools on parade,” he said.

Also speaking, Faith Okwonna, a Director in the commission said the festival was a developmental programme, and urged schools to comply strictly with the competition rules.

Okwonna, who distributed the rules and timeline for the competition, said that the picking and submission of forms would last between March 11 and April 8.

She said that 12 sporting events in the U12, U14 and U18 categories would be competed for at the festival which has a lot of promise this year

The events included Athletics, Basketball, Chess, Cricket, Football, Ncho and Table Tennis.

Others are Taekwondo, Tennis, Scrabble, Swimming, Volleyball were approved for the festival and would be competed in U12, U14 and U18 categories.