Wheelchair tennis players in Nigeria may still have to hold on for a while after the exclusion of their sport from the much anticipated National Sports Festival due to lack of funds, Nigerian Tennis Live checks have revealed.
Reports say the tennis event for the physically challenged was removed from the list of sports approved for the Nigerian ‘Olympics’, leaving only 25 other games up for competition by the Nigerian athletes.
The wheelchair tennis players would not have any of these and immediately started asking questions and in the same vein, the President of the Nigeria Tennis Federation (NTF), Engr. Dayo Akindoju, made moves to seek a redress on the issue.
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| Alex Adewale and Wasiu Yusuf are the two best Nigerian wheelchair tennis players. They have also been without national tournaments. |
While revealing some of the moves made by the federation on the issue bothering on the physically-challenged players, Engr. Akindoju noted that the Sports Commission asked for a letter to be written and this has been done.
“We have written letters and have submitted to the organisers of the National Sports Festival, asking why wheelchair tennis was removed from the tournament.
“They explained that only 25 Sports were approved and even that number is still being reviewed downwards. Their reason for removing wheelchair tennis is the lack of funds in the Commission but we are asking for them to add us back to the list of sports.
“We’ve been asked to write, and we have written, so we are waiting for their response and are hopeful that something really good will come out of the letter we have written,” the NTF President told Nigerian Tennis Live.
The wheelchair tennis players are still unhappy about this development and have kept calling on the federation to intervene on their behalf as they have been starved of national tournaments (apart from the annual CBN Open) in the last few years.