Nigeria is doing very good in table tennis –Nasiru

Nasiru

Bello Nasiru is the chief coach, Nigerian Table Tennis Federation, and he knows virtually all there is to know about it as a sport in Nigeria, being a former player himself and now coaching professionals, amateurs and emerging talents.

So when he says something about it, it has to be respected, and according to him, it is doing very well in Nigeria.

Speaking with Oseyiza Oogbodo Blog, he said, “Table tennis is developing in Nigeria. I say so because we have a male player in the world chart, the world ranking. If a country has a good potential player in the world ranking, it means that sport is going up in that country, and we have Haruna Quadri within one to thirty in the whole world which means we’re doing very well in Nigeria as far as table tennis sport is concerned.”

Reacting to why Nigeria has just one player in the top thirty, and not two or even four, he said, “Yeah, we can have two, four but the area of development is the most important thing. And when you’re developing, and also giving them a kind of exposure on other continents through international tournaments to play with different players, acquire more knowledge, acquire skills and different styles, if you have a student in your class, and you nurture him from Monday to Friday, January to December without setting a question for him or her, how will you determine if he or she understands the topic you’re teaching them or not? So examination is very important for students. When a sportsman participates in an international competition, it is an examination for that player or athlete.

“So I’m satisfied because when you go to the world, we’re there. On the Africa continent, we’re there. We have so many table tennis players. In the area of junior championships, we’re there. In the area of junior champions, our Nigerian players jetted out two months ago to take part in youth Olympics qualifications in Morocco, and Tosin Oribamise from Ekiti, a Nigerian female teenage player qualified from the whole of the Africa continent to be the female number one that represent Africa and Nigeria in the youth Olympics that is coming up next year and it’s a great wonderful joy and it tells you that Nigeria is coming up and we’re doing very good in the area of table tennis.”