The president of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, Tonobok Okowa, says the country will prepare athletes at home for the upcoming African Games in Ghana in anticipation of the absence of some of the athletes abroad, The PUNCH reports.
The 2023 African Games, the 13th edition, are being held from March 8 to 23 in three cities in Ghana β Accra, Kumasi and Cape Coast.
According to the Ministry of Sports Development, Nigeria’s team to the Games will open camp on Thursday, February 15 in five states across the country with the athletics team training at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium, Abuja.
Ahead of camp activities, AFN is uncertain about the availability of overseas-based athletes due to the timing of the overseas offseason.
“We’ll go there and see what we can do. If most of our foreign-based athletes do not come, we will use our home-based athletes to compete. Our technical department is hard at work. We will put some of the athletes from home in the camp,β Okowa told our correspondent.
“For the countries that are based abroad, we will work with the ministry of sports to see if they can give some training scholarships so that they can fly directly to Ghana.”
Nigeria’s leading athletes Tobi Amusan (100m hurdles), Ese Brume (long jump), Sade Olatoye (shot put), Chukwuebuka Enekwechi (shot put), who all won gold medals in the last edition in 2019, as well as Favor Ofili , who won silver in the 400m, are busy with the overseas indoor season, where they have made excellent starts.
Amusan has set the women’s 100m hurdles record in Africa twice this year. She first ran 7.77s to win the Astana indoor meeting in Kazakhstan on January 27, breaking Gloria Alozie’s long-standing mark of 7.82s set in 1999. A week later at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston, lowered the record to 7.75 seconds, second behind Tia Jones.
Ofili, who is making her professional debut this season, set an African women’s indoor 300m record by clocking 35.99 seconds also at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston on February 3.