The organizers of the much-anticipated Top 8 National Invitational tournament in Lagos have released the list of players for the event.
The tournament sponsored by Walter Akpani, the Managing Director of Providus bank, is scheduled to hold from 7-14 April, 2025, inside the FHA Sports Club in FESTAC Town, Lagos.
Mr. Godwin Kienka, the Director of the International Tennis Academy – organizers of the event, shared the list of the Top 8 players invited for the tournament with Nigeria Tennis Live on Saturday, 29 March, 2025.
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The Top 8 tournament was put together for the Top 8 players on the Nigerian national rankings, however, not all the players in the Top 8 are available at the moment, hence a few changes on the list.
For the Men’s event, Canice Abua leads the park with former Nigerian number one player, Uche Oparaoji, also listed. Others include Daniel Adeleye, Ikechukwu Iloputa, Musa Mohammed and Abayomi Philip.
Sani Yahaya-Inabo and Abubakar Yusuf, both of the Mambilla Barracks in Abuja, also made the list as Wild Card entrants for the competition as the number 9 and 10-ranked players.
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In the Women’s category, Khadijat Mohammed, Nigeria’s number one female tennis player, will lead the others to the FHA Sports Club for the highly competitive event in Lagos.
Blessing Omotayo, Omolayo Bamidele, Mary Udoffa, Success Ogunjobi and Bright Emmanuel are on the list based on their rankings while they are joined by Patience Onebamhoin and Etoro Bassey who made the list via the provisional Wild Card.
The organizers also informed that winners of the event in the male and female categories will go home with N500,000 and N400,000 respectively.
Runners-up will also be rewarded with N300,000 and N250,000 while the semifinalists will go home with N175,000 and N150,000 for the Men and Women’s events respectively.
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As part of the incentives for the competition, there will be accommodation for the players with each of them also getting N50,000 feeding allowance alongside free transportation to and from the designated hotel for the championship.
Nigeria Tennis Live will be on ground to provide adequate coverage for the competition which will be featuring some of the most talented players from Nigeria.