Pleads with international sporting federations to allow Nigerian athletes to use their training facilities
Tony Nezianya NOC PRO
By Rasheed Adewuyi
The Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) is working round the clock to ensure that the country’s athletes win medals at the 2024 summer Olympic games in France.
NOC’s public relations officer Tony Nezianya dropped this hint in an interview with Sports Joust on Tuesday, adding that the Olympic Committee has plans to secure more scholarships for its athletes in the United States of America.
Nezianya believes that going to school in the US will allow Nigerian athletes to train with better types of equipment and will give them more exposure.
Nezianya says: “Tobi Amusan is a good example. The NOC helped her with the scholarship that took her to the USA before she became a world champion. We want to prepare for the next Olympic in a big way, and the best way to do that is to support our athletes technically and financially.”
“It is very costly to access training gyms around the world, and that’s why the NOC needs the cooperation of everybody across the continents to prepare Nigerian athletes for the biggest sporting event in the world.”
Nezianya also stressed that apart from the scholarship, the NOC will give the athletes technical support before and during the All African Games in Accra, Ghana, in August and the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
He adds: “We will do better than the previous Olympics if the government increases its financial support. We need the cooperation of all the sports Federations to achieve our goal in Ghana and France.”
Accra, Kumasi, and Cape Coast are the cities that will host the upcoming All-African Games in Ghana.
Nigeria last won gold in the Olympics Games in 1996 through Chioma Ajunwa in the Long Jump event.