Chairman of the Technical Commission of the Nigeria Olympic (NOC), Honourable Daniel Igali has predicted a bright outing for Team Nigeria athletes in the forthcoming All Africa Games in Congo Brazaville in September.
He predicted that the Nigeria will be among the top finishers in the chase for medals at the Games. In this interview with Solomon Nwoke, Honourable Igali, who is also the President of the Nigeria Wrestling Federation speaks more about his wrestlers and Team Nigeria in general
By Solomon Nwoke
The NOC recently constituted new commissions ahead of the forthcoming All Africa Games in Congo Brazaville and Rio 2016 Olympics with you as the head of the Technical Commission, could you tell us what that entails being the head of the technical committee and what your terms of reference are?
The NOC as you said rightly constituted committees/ Commissions and their chairmen last Thursday and I was lucky or privileged or rather, challenged to be the chairman of the technical commission. It’ s great responsibility but I am further gladdened by the number of people we have at the committee. We have about 18 very knowledgeable people on the committee including a lot of federation presidents and some professors who I think will add a lot of value to the committee.
In terms of sports the technical committee is the most important maybe, next to the finance committee in the Olympic spectrum. We are to come up with some policies on selection criteria on how our athletes can be best prepared for optimum performance at major games especially. We are also to draw up a policy on what we will do with our juniors to the senior level. So it’s a lot of responsibility, but like I said in that inauguration last Thursday, committees like that don’t just function they have to be marginally funded for us to get the proper frame work needed to get things started. So I’m open with the NOC president who is an IOC member who understands what it entails that once we get started.
We are to have our first meeting next week. Before long we will be able to come up with a frame work for the All Africa Games coming up in the next two and half months.
So how does the NOC committees and the rest work with the ministerial committee for the All Africa Games?
I am also a member of the ministerial committee so is the vice chairman of the technical commission. So whatever we do will not be negligent of what the ministerial committee is doing, I fact it will only add. Whatever we plan at the LOC level at the NOC technical commission will only add to the technical committee.
You know you cannot divorce the NOC from the National Sports Commission in Nigeria. The two must work together and so, I think it’s not a parallel structure in any way. Our committee will add to what the ministerial committee will do.
Primarily, you are the president of the Nigeria Wrestling Federation ( NWF) and wrestlers for the AAG have not been selected because the competition which should have served as trials for selection has not been held since last year. What plan is on ground for the competition and how do you intend to overcome the financial challenge you have?
We are working with some people right now to see how we can source funds independent of government. Those things take a while and so our primary source of fund would still be the federal government, National Sports Commission and of course some state governments who have been very supportive, like the Bayelsa state government and the government of Delta state and we are also talking to Ondo state government that has two of our gold medalists at the Commonwealth Games level. Those are the states that can help you achieve some of the goals that you want to achieve.
Now coming back to your question of not having competition this year, we are open to having a competition next month (July) and hopefully by the middle of end next month to have our national championships and trials for the All Africa Games. We are looking at having a tournament in Romania by the second week of July and right after that we are going to set our selection criteria. I am hoping that has to take place because we have no choice. If we are lucky to have Governor Dickson Classics, then we use that as our national classics then we get to Abuja to have our selection.
Is Governor Dickson classics coming before the All Africa Games? Is that what you are saying. . . . . . .?
Igali ( cuts in) we must have the classics before the All Africa Games and it can’t be after July and we must have the selected in July.
And you are liaising with the governor on this?
We are hoping that the tournament takes place in July because like you know it’s been postponed twice. We have had fruitful discussions and I think it’s not lack of zeal on his part, now that the elections are over and since it’s an annual tournament and it’s in his name that means we should be able to have it in July.
We do know that you have been financing this federation from your pocket for some time, but the NSC came up at a time that they have released over two hundred million Naira to some of the federations, did your federation benefit from this for your programmes?
You know most times, the NSC funds programmes directly, so if a team is travelling to an African championships and money is released for that it also counts as support to the federation. So I wouldn’t know exactly how much that got to wrestling, but you know we have a big team and if you go, for instance, we went to African championship a couple of weeks ago and we travelled with a team of about 30 persons and were there for 10 days with visas, air tickets and other logistics. Let’s say everything gulped about N30 million just for one competition. So if the NSC say they spent about N200 million, you can’t fault them if one African Championship for wrestling alone can gulp up to N30million. A soccer team going somewhere with 37 people, and so on. About six to seven teams could take up that amount of money. So I wouldn’t be surprised if that is the case.
Technically speaking, do we have a team on ground for wrestling?
Yes, we have a national team, we just came back from the African championships and I didn’t pick the people from Chad or Niger Republic. They are Nigerians.
Can you vouch on their current form?
The team in my opinion is the best we have in this country now and until we have our national championships. The best athletes, as we speak now are the people that went to compete at the African Championships.
The All Africa Games is about two months away from now, how long time do you think you have to prepare your team?
Ideally, because we haven’t really competed this year, I would prefer a situation where as at the end of June my athletes should have had about 30 matches. Now the person that had the most matches was Amas had about five matches and that is not where I would want them to be. So if we should look at an ideal situation, I think they would still have needed about 35 to 40 matches, so that would be say about six months of preparation.
Let’s also look at the signals from the ministerial committee, we are still awaiting the announcement of the new minister of sports, the NSC and NOC are doing one thing or the other, if you check out all of these, the signals from NOC and NSC even from the Bayelsa state government, what are your fears?
Well if we are to be waiting for the preparedness of the NSC or state, we wouldn’t have attended these championships. As a federation, we have always been bringing the athletes together. Most times in Yanegoa because that’s where I stay and we are able to manage to keep them together and train together at least a minimum of two weeks before we go to any championship. So we will not wait for them, I have already told the national team that the last week of June they need to all be in Yanegoa. I want us to have a preparatory camp before the main camp that would be organized by the NSC. Wrestling is one of the ‘A’ grade sports, we have athletics, wrestling, weightlifting, Badminton and the others. So we have original plans that this first week of July we’ll be in camp, it hasn’t come yet. I don’t know if its late because I am not someone who believes that athletes should be in camp for three or four months because sometimes, it kills the rationale behind it. I was an athletes and I never was in camp at any time for more than three weeks. You must have a reason for a camp, you camp and you compete and you camp again and compete. But staying in camp for six months and that is the mentality we have come to adopt.
If athletes are not sequestered it means we are not prepared and it doesn’t need to be that way. The biggest problem that we always had is that our athletes when they are in their states they don’t do anything. It’s only when you call them that you have to start training them and you know that it takes a minimum of six weeks to get them ready to go to competitions.
So getting back to your question, I think if we start by the end of this month, we’ll have about two and half months to the gems, we should be fine.
When the All Africa Games ends people will not look at these problems they will first of all look at the medal table; how many did wrestling win? This can perhaps be a source of worry. With all of these can you readily say this man will win gold, silver or bronze because that’s what the Nigerian society wants hear. Have you put all of this together?
I have obviously, it’s something that I worked my head around. Everyday I look at the teams in Africa and I look at the different weight classes and I try to make some assumptions on who can and who can’t win based on the best scenario. I think at the Africa Games especially, if we start preparing from the end of June and if we have camp set for two months, we should be fine. But that is not to say that that is an ideal situation because we haven’t had the tournament that we need. For me, it’s even more than the tournaments, these athletes should compete for about six times in a year at the minimum. If we are not competing , then we are in trouble. If we are able to camp in a closed camp set up we have two training partners at the most or one. These training partners know exactly what you do and you know exactly what he does, the most you can benefit from your camp situation is your fitness. So you are going to have a better fitness, what about the technique and that is the issue, so you going to a competition exposes what is lacking in an athlete and he can come back and work on it. But if you are in a camp situation with one partner, you can train for one whole year with one camp partner and you will essentially be the way you are except that you will be shaded than the other athletes.
Wouldn’t a foreign tour actually address that problem which you are against now?
A foreign training tour would expose you to one or two training partners. We have gone a lot of foreign tours. If you go to a foreign tour, you normally train with a club, but sometimes with the national team and that national team has essentially one partner that trains with you. In competitions you will be exposed to three to six partners in one competition. But sometimes when we go to competitions what I do is to arrange dual meet with other teams. So before or after the tournament sometimes an athlete gets knocked out in the first round and only has one match, what I do is to arrange for him to have two or three matches before the next bout. So the training tour will only expose you to different training methods, but does not necessarily address the issue of technique and partners and that’s why I harp more on competitions. We may not be able to go on a training tour, but they will encourage teams to go on competitions before the Games.
So if you say you are not for the training tour, what will be your own argument for it?
I am not saying that I am not for the training tour, but the position of NSC is that because of the time that we have and the available funds, we may not be able to go on a training tour. For me, my athletes will start camping from next week, we are looking at a competition in Romania which is between 12th – 17th of July. And I would Ideally like a National championship in July to select my team. I do that we should be fine and additionally because of our deficiency in Greco Roman, I am working on a Greco Roman coach that we intend to hire for the period of the Games. So it’s about three months and while looking at that, I am also looking at the free style coach and I intend to discuss that with the Director General ( DG), so that we can have these two people come before the first week of July so that we can address those leakages before the end of September. If we get the result or I get the kind of turn around we can get from these two professors we can retain them till the Olympics.
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