Four gold medals, two silver and seven bronze in arm wrestling sport, have been considered good enough for Nigeria at the African Games in Accra, Ghana.
This was the submission of the president of Nigeria Arm Wrestling Federation, Engineer Samuel Olatunji Jackson while fielding questions from Sports 247 on his impressions of his team’s outing at the Games, where the sport featured as a scoring event in its maiden outing at this level.
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Although he admitted that garnering four gold medals from a possible total haul of 28 is far from excellent, Engineer Jackson stressed that it is a good beginning for Nigeria.
He added that the experience acquired from the Accra competition will be a stepping stone to greater heights for Nigeria’s arm wrestling contingent ahead of a major championship next year.
Jackson stated at length: “I’m elated because this is our first time of coming to the African Games and we made Nigeria proud.
“I want to say thank you to the athletes, the coaches, the minister, workers in the ministry, and especially the journalists for believing in us. It was not a day’s job.
“I am the immediate past president of the African Arm Wrestling Federation, the continental head. The African current president, from Ghana, was my secretary and the assistant is from Cameroon.
“I use this opportunity to say congratulations to the current president, who is also the president of Ghana. We had a vision, and we worked on that plan for four years.
“The current president went all out, with our support, to ensure that arm wrestling became not just a demonstration sport at the Africa Games, but a scoring event that has a sport code.
“A lot of things were done behind the scenes and a lot of underground work before we could get to this level.
“Arm wrestling has been about 22 years in Africa, and we celebrated 20 years of it in Nigeria two years ago. We must have arm wrestling at the African Games, but this wouldn’t have been possible without the government of Ghana and the minister of sports in Ghana, the support from the world federation, especially we the African executive members, to ensure that the journey started four-five years ago and cumulated in having arm wrestling at this year’s Africa Games.
“Egypt is our foundation. They have been doing it for more than 50 years, and South Africa has been very strong too, but Nigeria came into it before Ghana.
“We are somehow at par with Ghana, but Egypt and Mali are way ahead of us. We want to do better because there are 28 gold medals on offer in this event.
“What we will do now is just pick positives and consolidate on our gains here and prepare for the African Championship next year in Togo. We’ve seen the areas we need to improve on and those where we will consolidate.
“We need to do our analysis. We need to pick athletes in categories we’re sure of getting medals, and that’s what we’ll do in the next one year until we head to Togo for the African championship next year.
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