BY Victor Akhidenor
The Director General of the National Sports Commission, Alhassan Yakmut, has said that Team Nigeria will emerge the overall winner at the next African Games.
Nigeria finished second behind Egypt at the end of the 11th edition of the games in Congo-Brazzaville, between September 5 and 19.
Team Nigeria bagged 47 gold, 66 silver and 43 bronze medals while Egypt won 85 gold 64 silver and 68 bronze medals. South Africa were third with 41 gold, 41 silver and 40 bronze medals.
But Yakmut expects a better outing from Nigeria in the next edition.
“It is time to start winning the games and this will start with the next event. We are going to work out the template to counter other top countries in their areas of strength,” he said.
“We will work out a programme to get good athletes for swimming, gymnastics and fencing. These are the areas we did not win any medal but Egypt and South Africa did.
“It is going to be a deliberate plan by the NSC for Nigeria to win the next games. We cannot continue to be placing second and third when we know there is a solution.”
He, however, showered praises on the athletes.
“I am really proud of our athletes and I am overjoyed that at the end only Egypt did better than us on the medals table. This is very great because these athletes did not go on training tour. They all camped in Nigeria and now we did better than the last edition in Maputo.
“We have areas to look into for improvement and we are also going to strengthen our areas of core competence where we are already facing challenges.”
A breakdown of Team Nigeria’s medals showed that Athletics accounted for more medals recording 10 gold, nine silver and five bronze medals.
Wrestling came second with nine gold, five silver and four bronze medals. Weightlifting finished third with eight gold, 18 silver and nine bronze medals while Powerlifting accounted for eight gold, seven silver and two bronze medals.
The men’s football team won a bronze medal while Basketball recorded silver (Women) and a bronze (Men). In Cycling, the team won a gold, silver, and bronze medals.
Team Nigeria arrived in Abuja on Sunday night from Congo.
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