Accra - Elias Gora, the leader of the Nigerian Delegation to the 2nd ECOWAS Games in Accra, Ghana, has called for re-organisation of boxing in Nigeria, saying it was facing crises.
Gora was reacting to the string of losses of at least three gold medal opportunities in the sport at the Games on Thursday in Accra.
The Games are scheduled to formally close later on Friday.
Gora told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) correspondent covering the games that it was evident from the losses that Nigerian boxing was in crises.
``It is a revelation of the fact that we have problem with boxing in Nigeria today. Just last year Nigeria was able to defeat all the Ghanaians that came to Nigeria in Benin.
``Today, the Ghanaians are overtaking us because they have these Cuban coaches training their boxers.
``So, we need to get back home and prepare our athletes and get back to the grassroots and see what we can do to introduce boxing and get good coaches that will mentor and train.’’
He noted, however, that Nigeria did not come with team sports like volleyball and handball, two sports that could have contributed to the medals table, largely because of financial constraints.
``Unfortunately we did not want to come with team sports because of some financial constraints, so far so good.
``Ghana entered five sports and from results you can see they won both volleyball and handball which are predominantly Nigerian sports within the sub-region.
They are also dominating very well in boxing as we can see this evening.’’
Gora then criticised the officiating of the athletics and boxing events, saying that bad officiating in some of the events left one wondering if this was the friendship Games that the competitions were out to achieve.
Meanwhile, Ghana has emerged the leading country on the medals table with 17gold to Nigeria’s 13.
NAN
