Habu Gumel, President of the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC), on Friday called on sports federations to use the African Games to assess their level of preparedness for the 2024 Olympics.
He charged the federations to test-run their readiness for the 2024 Olympic Games by using the African Games for both qualification and awareness.
A statement by Tony Nezianya, NOC’s Public Relations Officer, said after several postponements, Ghana will finally host the 13th African Games from 8 March to 23 March 2024, in Accra.
“Before then, the Youth Winter Games will take place in Gangwom, South Korea, from 19 January to 1 February 2024. The Games will offer opportunities for more athletes to qualify for the Paris Games.
“Out of the 29 sports at the Accra Games, eight will be Olympic-qualifying and seven will be demonstration events.
“It is hoped that Nigeria, which has performed well in past African Games, will use the opportunity to qualify more athletes for the Summer Games in Paris, a city famed as the citadel of love.
“However, currently we have only qualified for eight slots at the Olympics, as revealed. As of today and heading into the Olympic year 2024, our nation has only qualified three in athletics, three in boxing, and one each in cycling and wrestling,” Gumel said.
He added that the abysmal level of athletes’ qualifications was worrisome.
“This is a far cry from expectations, even though we are still hopeful of qualifying more athletes, especially with our women’s basketball and women’s football teams still engaged in the qualifying series,” he said.
Mr Gumel noted that some of Nigeria’s talented athletes and teams were missing out because they failed to take part in mandatory qualification events leading to the Olympic Games.
According to him, there is no doubt that the country needs to chart a new course by making a clear departure from the status quo in the drive for better results.
“Right now, the qualification system for both individual and team sports for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is ongoing and as far as the Olympic Games are concerned, a critical take-off point is the qualification tournaments.
“An obvious point worth mentioning has been that qualifying more athletes would not only brighten the chances for a podium finish but build up Nigeria’s quota for an official team contingent to the Olympic Games,” he said.
The NOC helmsman, therefore, appealed to the Minister of Sports to ensure Nigeria would take part in the African Games and other qualifying tournaments to improve the country’s strong presence at the Olympics.
“The failure of any Federation, athlete or team to feature in one or more of the qualification tournaments lined up by the International Federations ahead of the Games would mean automatic self-disqualification from the Olympic Games,” said Gumel.
He, however, said he was certain all parties were committed to the success of the nation and were determined to surpass the 1996 record.
According to him, the ministry has agreed to have another joint meeting of stakeholders.
He said the meeting would offer further opportunities to appeal for the minister’s goodwill and intervention to ensure that Nigeria’s medal hopefuls in key sports would participate in their programmed Olympic qualifier events.
“There is no doubt that our country has maintained her dominant position in terms of haulage of medals at the African Games, and we should be more determined to sustain our continental top rating.
“At the last edition of the African Games in Morocco in 2019, Nigeria finished in second position, with 46 Gold, 33 Silver and 48 Bronze medals, behind Egypt, which came first, while South Africa was third,” he said.
Mr Gumel urged the Sports Minister to strengthen the Federations and support them with funding as they were critical to the success of the sports sector.
Looking back at Nigeria’s performance at the previous Olympics, Mr Gumel pointed out that Atlanta ‘96, where Nigeria won two gold medals, has remained Nigeria’s best outing to date.
‘’We won other medals of other colours but none came close to the 1996 Epochal performance,” he said.
READ ALSO: Team Nigeria wrestlers target multiple podium finishes in Serbia – Igali
Adewale Oladunjoye, president of Nigeria Triathlon Union (NTU) who was at that meeting, said: “To go for qualifiers will require massive funding of teams by the ministry.”
He said that even though the Minister had called for collaboration with the private sector, we must note that the sector was facing fluctuating fortunes in sourcing scarce foreign exchange to stabilise their businesses.
Oyelade Akinniyi of the Nigeria Boxing Federation made an appeal to the Sports Minister, requesting a refund of the funds spent by his federation to participate in the qualifiers that secured the country’s three boxing slots at the Olympics.
“We have a few more qualification opportunities. We have approvals awaiting cash backing from the sports ministry,” he said.
Ademola Daniel, Chairman of the Curling Sports Federation, also called for speedy intervention to enable his team to travel to participate in the Youth Winter Games in Gangwom, South Korea.
(NAN)
Support PREMIUM TIMES’ journalism of integrity and credibility
Good journalism costs a lot of money. Yet only good journalism can ensure the possibility of a good society, an accountable democracy, and a transparent government.
For continued free access to the best investigative journalism in the country we ask you to consider making a modest support to this noble endeavour.
By contributing to PREMIUM TIMES, you are helping to sustain a journalism of relevance and ensuring it remains free and available to all.
Donate
TEXT AD: Call Willie – +2348098788999
