ACF: Under-17 Peace, Unity Football Tournament Ends, as Bauchi Emerged Victorious

ACF: Under-17 Peace, Unity Football Tournament Ends, as Bauchi Emerged Victorious 

By Admin

The 2025 Under-17 Northeast Peace and Unity Football Tournament has ended at the Tafawa Balewa Stadium in Bauchi, with Team Bauchi defeating Gombe 4–1 on penalties shootout on Tuesday.

The tournament, organized by the Arewa Consultative Forum (ACF), as part of the activities marking the 25th anniversary celebration of the forum later this month in Kaduna state.

While presenting the trophy to Team Bauchi at the zonal final, both coaches Isah Maigari and Mubarak Abdullahi expressed optimism that the tournament would serve as a platform to nurture young talents and advance youth football development in the region.

Coach Maigari said “honestly, our players performed very well throughout the tournament. As you can see, this is the only match we lost — the final against the host team. We hope to perform even better when we get to Kaduna.”

While Coach Mubarak expressed hope to do even better “We thank our state government for the support given to us throughout the tournament, we also appreciate the sports administrators and stakeholders, despite our late preparation, we’re determined to maintain the momentum and, by God’s grace, be crowned champions in the coming days in Kaduna.”

Similarly, the organizers and the Bauchi State Commissioner for Youth and Sports, Adamu Babayo Gabarin, emphasized the importance of using sports to engage young people and promote peace across 19 northern state and Nigeria as a whole.

The Bauchi commissioner of Youth and Sports Adamu Babayo Gabarin thanked the Arewa Consultative Forum for choosing Bauchi state as one of the center in the north for the elimination tournament, says that gives the team and the government alot of confidence to do even more in promoting youth football.

While the Coordinator of the the ACF peace and unity tournament, Honourable Abubakar Fakai expressed that, apart from promoting football the forum is expected to spend over 100 billiion naira through an endowment fund and they are ever ready to address perennial challenges affecting the northern part of the country especially in the area of socio-economic development in general.

According to them, the selection of players for the Under-17 category followed zonal eliminations, with the grand finale expected in Kaduna  on 20th and 22nd of November 2025.