A camp for the Nigeria Weightlifting Team is being held in Lokoja for a period of five weeks, in preparation for the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) World Championship in Uzbekistan.
The 2021 World Weightlifting Championship is scheduled for 7th to 17th December, 2021 will also serve as the 2022 Commonwealth Games qualifier.
After missing the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the Nigeria Weightlifting Federation (NWF) says machineries has been set aside to ensure a repeat of the incident does not happen at Paris 2024 Olympics.
The seven weightlifters invited to camp includes; 2019 African Games Champions, Emmanuel Appah -61kg (3 gold medals), Ogbonne Eze -71kg (3 gold medals) and Folashade Lawal – 59kg (3 gold medals).
Others are; Athletes Representative of NWF, Adijat Olarinoye -55kg (2 gold and 1 silver 2019 African Games), Stella Kingsley -49kg (3 silver 2019 African Games), National Champions; Taiwo Liadi (-76kg) and Umoafia Edidiong (-67kg).
The President of Nigeria Weightlifting Federation, Ibrahim Abdul told www.aclsports.com that the weightlifters are his priority.
He said the Federation was also preparing for the Commonwealth games next year.
“I assure you that we will be at the next Olympics, we will be going for the qualifiers for the commonwealth games in December.
“I have donated my house for camping in Lokoja, athletes are already in camp and they have been training for close to two weeks. The board decided to resume camp early in order to avoid fire brigade approaches in our tenure; we cannot also expect the athletes to perform magic if we do not camp them early,” he said.
