We Need More Support To Excel In Tokyo...Oboh

We Need More Support To Excel In Tokyo - Oboh By Niyi Busari The President, Nigeria Para-powerlifting Federation (NPF), Mrs Queen Oboh, has appealed to the Federal Government, state governors, as well as captain of industries to give more support to her federation to consolidate on its achievements at the just concluded 2018 Commonwealth Games which held in Gold Coast Australia. The Queen Oboh-led NPF won four gold medals, two silver medals and broke a world record as Team Nigeria occupied 9th position nine gold, nine silver and six bronze medals, with a total of 24 medals won. Speaking with our correspondent at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Oboh praised the athletes for their feat but added that she had to motivate the athletes to achieve success and fulfilled her promises. According to her, the morale of the athletes was low at a point but she was able to motivate them through monetary incentives. She said, “I know they have been doing this but there was a point that their spirit went down and were not ready to do this anymore because the country was not complementing what they are doing. I know what it took me to bring their morale up to achieve this great feat. Talking about what motivated them, before they left I gave them a promise which I fulfilled because I understand that money answer all calls. With money, you can do anything. I promised them a lot of money that a gold medalist will get N100,000, gave to silver and bronze medalists and the coaches too. When. they remembered the promise, it motivated them to put all efforts because they were ready to have the money. We went with six lifters and they all came back with six medals meaning that Nigeria did not invest wrongly. This shows that if we had gone with 12 athletes, it could have been a clean sweep of medals for Nigeria. The icing on the cake is the world record set by Esther Oyema who set a new world record in the 131kg with a total of 141.6 points. In all, we went with six athletes, won four gold, two silver and set a new world record.” “We are already preparing them for the 2020 Olympics and for any of them to qualify, we have to participate in at least four international events and that is why I am appealing to governors, captain of industries and most especially the Ministry of Youth and Sports to give us the necessary support to participate in the events en route 2020. We have one coming up in France which is going to cost us almost €42,000 to go and if any of them did not go, none of them will qualify for the Olympics.” Head coach and technical director of NPF, Are Feyisetan, said the feat was achieved through the self-effort and the determination of the athletes to succeed. “We told them the only way to win medals is to prepare very well, be disciplined and not to wait on government and that is the results we are seeing today.”