BY RAYMOND NWADUBA
President of Nigeria Shooting Federation,
Navy Captain Bamidele Olatunji Ayoade has decried the lack of funding which he explained is the bane of most sports federations in the country.
While speaking to journalists at one of the Shooting events at the Gateway Games, Navy Captain Olatunji revealed that 12 States with about 120 athletes are participating at the Ogun 2024 National Sports Festival.
According to the NSF boss, the insinuations that Shooting is not getting enough attention may not be completely correct as that might be in terms of publicity but it’s not different from the attention other sports are getting.
He stated that outside the economic realities in Nigeria today, they are getting the right support, which they have access to the Chairman and the DG National Sports Commission but that whenever they need to go for a competition they are challenged by funding which is a peculiar problem to all the federations.
He however said that outside from that, he believes they have started the move to bring the sport back to limelight which can only get better.
He is deeply pained that Nigeria has never featured in Shooting at the Olympics because the qualification process is long and very expensive. But the truth is that they cannot know or tell who may qualify.
Navy Captain Olatunji emphasized that despite that yet the scores are very good for Nigerian Shooters when they go for international competitions some of them because they have not gone for several competitions disappoint.
He maintained that when they actually expect the Shooters to make the impact by getting at least the qualification score they lose out.
“Last two years prior to the 2024 Paris Olympics we had a two Male Shooters that I counted on to qualify but unfortunately during the African Championship in Egypt, they started very well but somehow got carried away and their performance weren’t good enough.
Again, he said that another set of athletes they had hoped would have made the minimum qualification score were at Baku, Azerbaijan but unfortunately they had the worst of experience transporting their equipment to Azerbaijan as they were confiscated in Dubai.
He said it took them almost twenty one days before they were able to recover it which that really impacted on their training and ability to compete because the athletes now competed without their weapons.
This he said affected them and a couple of challenges which he believed they have surmounted.
Hopefully. he promised to lead the federation to the Olympics. “I want to qualify the first Shooting Olympian. It’s my dream and God will bring it to pass.
He revealed that they are receiving new equipment from ISSF which will improve their equipment haul and capacity.
But he lamented that Nigeria has the talents but lack the experience and training which is what they go out of the country to get.
