Interview: Why Nigeria will win medals at the Olympics (photos)

Ahead of the 2016 Olympics billed for Rio-Brazil in August, the president of the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) Wahid Enitan Oshodi speaks on Nigeria’s preparations for the games.

In this interview with NAIJ.com Sports, Oshodi explained that the ongoing Premier Lotto Tennis Open in Lagos will help the country’s tennis representatives to prepare adequately for the games in Brazil.

NAIJ.com Sports: How will this tournament boost Nigeria’s chances in winning medals at the Rio Olympics?

Top players who have qualified for the Olympics are playing here; it’s part of their preparation. Our preparation centers round playing the best player in the world and this is the start to that. From here we move straight up to the Japan and Korea Open befor the Olympics.

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There is no other way with Table Tennis, you need to play players who are better than you, players who play a different style and that is what we are doing.

If you see the players who have come to Nigeria this year, you will know were are making adequate preparations.

Top European players, former Junior World Champion now a member of the Portuguese bronze winning team at the world championships and a host of players who can only help our players were all here.

For us as a federation more importantly, this helps our junior players to develop and aspire to play the best in the world right here in Lagos before the Lagos fanatical crowd, and hopefully that will give them the impetus to grow.

NAIJ.com Sports: Are you promising medals in Tennis for Nigerians?

As a president of the Federation, I believe that once we prepare properly we have a team that will do well. We have gone beyond expectations in the last two years; Commonwealth medals, Africa Games medals, Aruna Quadri quarter finals in the World Cup.

Most importantly, people overlook the fact that Table Tennis is the only Sport that has ever produced a Nigerian World player the year.

It is a fantastic achievement but it seems to be overlooked by the government and the media. For Aruna to have come from number 527 in the world to 29th now is an unbelievable achievement but we are still not getting the kudos we deserve.

The players tell me maybe it is time to speak out and hopefully we’ll get some help from Nigerians, but we will keep on doing what we can to help the sport.

I am confident that if we prepare properly, we have our preparation in place, if we can have the funding to meet those preparations, then I believe we can do very well at the Olympics.

NAIJ.com Sports: Let’s look at the financial aspect, how have you been able to cope with gathering players from around the world?

Of course it has been very difficult. This requires a lot of money especially when you think about the preparatory tournament.

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We have to go through a lot to help Nigerian players to qualify for this tournament and also we are happy with the fact that we can do it. But we must give kudos to our sponsors; Premier Lotto Nigeria Limited, Lagos state government and the likes, a lot of credit must go to them instead of the federation.

NAIJ.com Sports: Any plans to discover new home grown talents in this tournament?

We have had three to four tournaments all through the year and so far it has produced players especially in the junior and cadet category.

We have about 30 of them for this tournament, this is their time to shine playing at home, last year we discovered one or two of them who moved to the junior national team.

Like I said the junior is an evolution, players keep coming and going and this year people will now see that if you do well in Nigeria you will get the chance to play for the national team.

The national team is nobody’s birth right and for me nobody is too young or too old to play for the national team. It is your performance that gets you into the team.

Like Jide Omotayo, we are very hopeful for him, I believe this has to be his big year, this is his chance to do well at home and then go on to do bigger things in Europe.

Abayomi Animashaun is still very young, ‘the kid’ as they call him, 13-years-old now but his table tennis play is at a much higher level and we have roughly 20 to 30 of them playing.

The future is bright for the young table tennis players and this tournament will help them.

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