I’m the first African to coach a player to Olympics quarter-final -Nasiru

Nasiru

Bello Nasiru is the Chief Coach, Nigerian Table Tennis Federation. He started playing table tennis in 1974 and has now risen to the exalted position of national coach. When Oseyiza Oogbodo Blog met him at the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos, it was during a tournament organized to discover new adolescent players.

Though he was quite busy, he made time to speak, and unsurprisingly, when asked his candid view of table tennis in the country, he defended its honour, declaring that “it’s developing. Why I say so is that we have a male player in the world chart in the world ranking. If a country has a good potential player on world ranking, it means that sport is growing up in that country. That we have Haruna Quadri within one to thirty in the whole world means we’re doing very well in Nigeria as far as table tennis sport is concerned.”

He insisted that he’s satisfied with the level of table tennis in Nigeria, saying, “Yeah. Because when you go to the world ranking, we’re there. On the continent, Africa, we’re there. We have Haruna and a lot of others. In the area of junior championships, we’re there. In the area of junior championships, our players recently took part in Youth Olympics qualifiers in Morocco. Tosin Oribamise form Ekiti, a Nigerian female teenage player qualified from the whole African continent to be the female number one that will represent Africa and Nigeria in the Youth Olympics coming up this year. That’s a great wonderful joy to tell you Nigeria is coming up, that we’re doing very good in table tennis.”

Considering that he says table tennis is doing good, OOB asked him if there were any challenges, if he government’s support was adequate, his answer was prompt.

“The issue is, it’s not only government that can bankroll or shoulder sports in any country. The individual contribution matters a lot. The philanthropists matter a lot. The companies matter a lot. The ministry or NSC is like a father and mother who bear a hundred children. They cannot train them all alone. They need support from all these angles. We have a lot of companies and individuals in Nigeria. They should also support us on behalf of all Nigerians.”

And on why Nigeria has just one player in the top thirty, and not two, three, four, he said, “Yeah, we can have two, four. But the area of development is the most important thing. And when you’re developing, you must also send them, give them a kind of exposure to other continents by sponsoring them for international tournaments to play with different players, acquire more knowledge, more skills, different styles. If you have a student in your class, you nurture that student from Monday to Friday, January to December without setting a question for the student, how will you determine whether he or she knows the topic you’re teaching them or not? So examination is very important for a student. When a player or sportsman participates in an international competition or in any kind of competition, that is an examination for that player or athlete.”

Speaking about his journey so far in table tennis: “I’ve been playing since 1974. And I started entering this table tennis hall (at National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos) since 1978. During my time, there was nothing like encouragement. You could remember now. People that were involved in sport in those days were believed to be unserious. When your parents are telling you to go to school to become a lawyer, a doctor, but some people saw another future, let me also be part of this. So that part of this is what we did in those days. And when we did it, we did it to the limelight. I’ve represented Lagos State before. I played for Abuja and became their coach. I was a coach-player for Leventis and also Nigerian Breweries. And I’m part and parcel of the people that brought table tennis up in 1978. And I’ve delivered a lot of medals both as a player and a coach. My first experience as a coach was in 1985 with FCT Sports Council. And in 1986, when we went to the first Under-18 Babangida Cup in Kano, I was with FCT as the first table tennis coach and I delivered the whole medals. When I was with special sports, that is, disabled association, as their coach, in 1990, we went to Stoke Games in London and we were second in the whole world behind Korea. China, forget. Japan, forget. We were I took with me six players in wheelchair. You see, table tennis is not something you just rush into. You must have an idea and endurance. When I was doing it that time, nobody even thought that disableds will come to limelight. In 1996, I took my paralympic team to Atlanta 96 where we won bronze medal. In Sydney Olympics 2000, I took the paralympic team and delivered three gold medals. Gold. Not silver or bronze. And at the Olympic Games 2016, I was the first coach in the whole of African continent that coach a player to quarter finals in an Olympics with Haruna Quadri. Nobody had ever achieved it before. No coach had ever done it before. So there are a lot of projects on ground. You see, in Nigeria, we have a lot of talented, good coaches but the problem they are facing is that they’ve not been given enough exposure.”

He continued on how coaches would get exposure, saying, “Yeah, the way forward is finance, encouragement. Coaches are doing their job all over Nigeria. They have the tune on how they’re training their players. If the players are going anywhere, if you allow the coaches to go with them, when they go there, it may even be outside Nigeria, they too will learn a lot of skills from different players there from all over the world. The challenges table tennis players normally face are two. The first is the rubber they play with. The second one is the ball. They’re very, very expensive. One ball is N1,500. Rubber is N50,000 for both red and black. And we’ve not even talked of the wood. We have wood of N200,000 and also of N150,000. Most foreign players have their equipments sponsored by different companies. They didn’t pour the whole thing on their governments. That’s why you see them in the limelight. And our players abroad, their clubs give them these facilities free of charge. It’s not like that here in Nigeria. The players are playing under bad conditions, but at the same time, they’re coming up and coming out in limelight because they are talented. Tosin Oribamise is not a professional but local player. Look at her. She went to Morocco and qualified over all other African nations whose players are professionals in some clubs, in some countries.”

And on his material status, OOB asked him if he was fulfilled, if he was rich, if he has built his own house so will never be homeless, since he’s been in table tennis for forty-four years, and there are stories of great sportsmen dying in penury and all that.

“Insha Allahu, I’m a little bit okay. Nobody will tell you they are 100% okay in this world. I’ve never seen it. But personally, if you can eat three times a day, or even twice, you should thank your God, and I thank my God that provides for me and my children,” he replied.

He also spoke on the NTTF’s plans to further move table tennis forward.

“Within a short period, that’s why we’re calling companies and philanthropists to come into table tennis and give their moral and financial support, in the 70s and 80s when we’re playing in those days, table tennis was the second game in the whole of this country. When you talk of football, you talk of table tennis, because that time, you see table tennis boards along every street and people playing on them. And we’ll ensure that era returns by catching them very young henceforth and which we’ve started already in discovering emerging talents. This is our hall and that’s the football pitch (of the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos). We have played two championships like that that tallied with football and people came into our hall before going to watch Eagles playing. So that’s to tell you people love table tennis if not more than football, then as much as football.”