The president of Nigeria Taekwondo Federation (NTF), Abdullahi Saidu-Baba has confessed that he is disappointed with his team’s performance at the Africa Games in Accra, Ghana.
Although he acknowledged that their feat of one gold, a silver and four bronze medals came through dint of hard work, Saidu-Baba pointed out that it was a far cry from their initial target of three gold medals.
He went on to declare that there is more work to be done by all taekwondo stakeholders in Nigeria to ensure that the team does better in subsequent competitions.
The taekwondo boss, however, took consolation from his observation that his athletes were able to perform better than other parts of the entire Nigerian contingent to the 13th Games, which came to a close Saturday night in Accra.
Saidu-Baba concluded: “We came to the African Games with high hopes of getting more gold medals for Nigeria, but, fortunately and unfortunately, we were able to record just a single gold, one silver and four bronze medals.
“The gold medal from kyurugi was won by Elizabeth Ihenacho, our sole qualifier for the France 2024 Olympics, and the silver was gotten by Josephine Isiku in poomsae minus-40 category
“She narrowly missed the gold medal.
For us, we felt it was an officiating thing, which they didn’t do us well, but we still just have to manage the silver.
“We also have a bronze from team mixed chibugi, that is fighting. It was a very tough one, and our team fought very well. In fact, they fought like lions in this one, more than their individual events, in which they did not fight like that.
“I was very glad that we were able to pick a medal in the very first time it was introduced at the African Games.
“For the pumsie, that is form and pattern, we got a silver and two bronze – making it a total of four bronze medals for our team.
“To me, it is not a bad result, considering when we look at our other sister sports from Nigeria and the general performance; but this is not what we were expecting.
“We were expecting to get not less than three gold medals. We did well, but it’s not the result we expected. That means more work needs to be done.”
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