The Vice-President, African Table Tennis Federation (ATTF), Olabanji Oladapo, said on Monday that Nigeria had received $150,000 worth of equipment for hosting the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) tournaments in the country.
Oladapo told our Correspondent in Lagos that the equipment were given to the country to facilitate hitch free ITTF-graded International competitions.
Our Correspondent reports that the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) hosted two major international competitions in one week, last month.
The Lagos World tour tagged, “the Nigeria Open”, took place between June 23 and June 26, while the Maiden Africa Top 16 tournament was held on June 27 and June 28, at the Molade Okoya-Thomas Hall, Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.
The winners in both the male and female categories of the Top 16 would represent the African Continent at the World Cup, slated for October in Argentina.
“The ITTF and ATTF supplied the equipment used for the tournaments, as part of their support to the hosting nation. They normally render such assistance to any country hosting an international competition and it was a great privilege for Nigeria to benefit from such a gesture,” he said.
The Nigerian highest-ranked table tennis administrator said that the federation now had all the equipment it never had.
“The federation now had all the modern equipment like those in Europe and other advanced table tennis playing countries,” he said.
The former Secretary-General of the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) said that the federation also used the opportunity to train its referees and umpires on the latest techniques in the sport.
Oladapo said that the technical officials went through a training programme and an examination, which the ITTF sent two experts to oversee.
“The training of technical officials were usually conducted in Europe. But with the hosting of the ITTF tournaments in Nigeria, the federation was saved the resources that would have been used to send them abroad.
“Table tennis officials in Nigeria now have up-to-date techniques involved in the sport as regards officiating,”” he said.
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