Badminton Federation of Nigeria (BFN) president, Francis Orbih believes the real idea of Nigeria having a successful expedition as hosts of this year’s African Badminton Championship is for the country’s players to emerge top overall at the end of it all.
Sports247.ng gathered that Orbih is enthusiastic that the BFN will be able to pull off a smooth continental show from April 22 to 28 at Alfred Diette-Spiff Civic Centre, Port Harcourt, but added his strong desire to see the country eventually finish top of the table.
Countries expected at the championship next month are Algeria, Benin Republic, Botswana, Congo, DR Congo, Eritrea and Egypt.
Others are Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mauritius, Seychelles, South Africa, Togo, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
While also revealing that the championship would be heralded by an event to unveil the competition’s mascot on Saturday in The Garden City, Orbih, who is also chairman of Lagos State Badminton Association, stressed that Nigerian will aim to host a very successful championship.
Orbih added that the definition of success for him is doing well with the right structure, facilities, organisation and welfare packages for all who will be part of the championship, and for the host team to win it.
He expatiated: “The first thing we will be looking forward to is to have a very good championships in terms of safety, where everybody will come and have fun and enjoy themselves.
“To have a seamless championships, where we will not have issues. As much as possible, we want to minimise this to the barest minimum.
“If we have a very good championships, where everything is perfect and worked out well and we don’t win, that success will not be complete.
“So, for us as a board, we want to host to win. After achieving that, we will be very happy and we will now term it very very successful.
“If Nigeria is going to be able to retain the trophies here. That is for us, the definition of success in this context.”
