President of the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC), Habu Gumel, Habu Gumel, has renewed the call on stakeholders in the sports sector to test-run their readiness for the 2024 Olympic Games by using the African Games for both qualification and awareness-creation.
A statement by Tony Nezianya, Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) said that after several postponements, the 13th African Games will finally be hosted by Ghana from March 8 to March 23, 2024, in Accra. Before then, the Youth Winter Games would be staged in Gangwom, South Korea, from Jan. 19 to Feb. 1, 2024.
According to Gumel, the Games will offer opportunities to qualify more athletes for the Paris showpiece. Of the 29 sports on offer at the Accra Games, eight will be Olympic-qualifying and seven, demonstration event.
it is hoped that Nigeria, which has performed well in past African Games, would use the opportunity to qualify more athletes for the Summer Games in Paris, a city famed as the citadel of love.
It is, however, sad that currently, we have only qualified for eight slots at the Olympics, as revealed by Gumel during a joint meeting of the NOC, the sports Federations and the Sports Ministry, headed by Sen. John Owan-Enoh.
“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, ” noted the NOC boss.
”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.
, Habu Gumel, Habu Gumel, has renewed the call on stakeholders in the sports sector to test-run their readiness for the 2024 Olympic Games by using the African Games for both qualification and awareness-creation.){kind=link}