Nigeria wins 3 medals in African Judo Championship

In spite of a hurriedly packaged team, Nigerian judokas still salvaged some honour in the African Judo Championship which ended in Port Elizabeth, South Africa last Sunday. Nigeria fielded a team of six judokas, who were never in camp and expectations were low for them.

But after five days of hostilities, Nigeria grabbed one silver and two bronze medals in the tournament.
Omolade Adebayo fighting in the -57 category for women, picked a silver while, Catherine Ewa-Ekuta and Nsa Bashir, picked a bronze each in the women(63kg) and men (-73kg) respectively.

National coach Edokpolor Ihaza beaming with smiles told nigeriasports.com on return from South Africa that, his team could have done better if, they had spent just a few days together in camp."The judokas tried with three medals but, I am sure we could have done better if there had been adequate preparation."the coach remarked."You know we did not spend one day together in camp".

However, Edokpolor said he was happy over how the whole championship went especially, with the performance of Nsa Bashir who turned out to be the youngest judoka in attendance."Bashir was a great revelation", Edokpolor said excitedly. "He is a young man with a great future" Edokpolor noted that when the judokas gathered in the hall for the weigh-in, "some officials and judokas were asking Bashir to leave their line.
They thought he was a spectator, considering his very boyish appearance"."But when the championship got underway, the youngman revealed that he was a world beater in the making".The national coach claimed that his sensational ward could have grabbed gold if he had not been robbed in his semi-final clash against a South African opponent.

"Bashir's performance did not come to me as a surprise. His father started teaching him judo right from when he was strong enough to take his first steps. We all should learn from the Bashirs and go all out and start catching the young talents for proper grooming", Edokpolor stressed. In his reaction, Nsa Bashir, who is from a family of judokas told nigeriasports.com that the African championship was an eye-opener for him."This championship was my first outing internationally and I am not disappointed in my performance.

In the future I will do better," the 18 year old Bashir, who is a student of the Ahmadu Bello University, ABU Zaria said.He blamed inadequate preparation of the team for the overall finishing "otherwise if we had been properly conditioned in a camp, we could have achieved better results". Young Bashir looking ahead said: "there is always a next time and I am sure going to prepare harder and do better".

by Ikpo Igbinoba, News Editor