Over 400 Wrestlers for National Open

No less than 400 wrestlers from various part of the country will take part in this year's National open Wrestling championship scheduled to place between June and August, 2005. According to head of Mediaand publicity of the Nigeria olympic Committe Tony Nezianya, "the national Open competition is aimed at grooming and replacing the wrestlers in the country, and also to re-kindle the older ones interest in the sport which has been waned".

Nezianya stressed that after the National open championship, the federation has planned to launch a campaign for zonal competitions that would be stage at the six zonal headquarters while a national final would be used to round off the event.

"We want to re-awake the rest of the Nigerian youth towards the sport, it's our belief that many Nigerian youths have the potentials to reach the height in the sport and it's our veiw that if Nigeria wrestlers on the tassel like Canadian-Nigeria born Daniel Igali could reach the heigt in the sport in , then the opotentials are there for Nigerians to perform well if given good grounding".

He maintained that in other to achieved this, the Nigeria Amateur Wrestling Federation(NAWF) has approved the setting up of five sub-committes to run the affairs of the the federation for the next four years.The committes are Technical Committe headed by Alhaji Habibu Abubakar,Colonel M.S. Maharaja, Jude Amadi, Mary Edet, Flt. Lt. R. Garba while the Director of Competitions committes are Group Captain Abdul Loko (chairman), and the Finance/Marketing members are Hon. Simon Achuba, Hon. silas Jafta, Chief Ebel Ebifemowei, Chief Timi Alaibe.

Other Committees are Media/Publicity which is headed by Tony Nezianya, Jude Amadi, Alhaji Habibu Abubakar, Hon. Silas Jafta, Hon. Simon Achuba, and while in the Women Commission we have Mrs Mary edet, Flt. Lt R. Garba.

Nezianya further stressed that the federation needs about 6.5 million Naira to executive the project at hand and appealling to welling-meaning Nigerians to support the sport.

By Onyinyechi Anyanwu
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