With less recent achievements in the sports, Table Tennis in Nigeria is gradually taking a downturn, considering past achievements and when compared to other sports presently.
Unlike other sports that are putting our sportsmen in global map, one will not boast of that when it comes to the table game. In the recently concluded Common Wealth Games in Birmingham, alot is not heard from the sport.
Lagos State Table Tennis Association member and coach of Table Tennis in Nigeria, Coach Samson Ajayi has shared more lights on the drastic decline of the beautiful game in Nigeria.
Talking to Sports247, Coach Ajayi lamented the poor condition of the game and ascribed the failure on the lack of government support for the sport and players of the sport.
“I am not too impressed with the situation of table tennis in Nigeria. We seriously need the help of government and other major personnel to rescue the game. We have a lot of players to play the game but we do not have facilities and equipment”.
It was gathered that not only that there are no enough facilities but also the facilities are on the high side, that is if the players want to purchase for themselves and this does not help the game in any way.
“We have a lot of players who want to play the game but there are no equipment. When you get to some table tennis halls, you will discover that there are no much tables. We lack facilities in the country. The players also lack equipment. The equipment are even on the high side. Before you can get a racket now you have to spend about two hundred and fifty thousand naira. It’s only very few who can afford even the fairly used rackets and that’s not durable.”
The table tennis coach, according to him is not impressed and seriously appeals to the government for serious intervention if the sports must grow in this country as this could be the cause of our below expectation performance at the just concluded Common Wealth Games.
He also emphasizes the need not to put all our hopes on foreign based players but we should invest in our home based players as well.
“We rely on our foreign based athletes because they train with very good equipment. If we equip our home based players with equipment, they will perform” coach Ajayi concluded.
