THE President of the Nigeria
Tennis Federation, Engineer Dayo Akindoju says the federation is bent on making
sure the International Tennis Federation approves its proposal of having a
substantial number of weeks for ITF Junior Tennis tournaments.
While revealing the
federation’s plan for Junior Tennis and wheelchair tennis in the 2019 season,
Akindoju also said there were talks about the introduction of Beach Tennis in
Nigeria and the country’s level of preparedness towards the forthcoming 1st
African Beach Games.
“We are fighting with [the]
ITF now, because out of the 9 weeks [of juniors tournaments] we applied for, so
far only one week in July has been approved,” the President said. “And we’re
telling them no, that it is not acceptable. We’ve written them back and we are
following that up.
“Our key concentration is on
junior tournaments, junior programs, reintroducing the games to schools. We
shall be distributing equipment a lot to schools [primary schools]. We are
procuring a thousand rackets and we are going to be distributing them to tennis
centres all over Nigeria. By tennis centres, I mean places where tennis is
played or where facilities are basically available [the ones that are existing
and the ones that will come up].
“In the wheelchair
department, we are also going to make some major developments.
“We are going to be buying
10 additional wheelchairs, we are going to be running a lot of wheelchair
clinics in Kano and Minna, which are both settled for now. We are going to the
East in Owerri to do some clinics later this year on wheelchair,” he disclosed.
In 2013, the CBN Open added
the wheelchair singles as a category to its yearly events. In November last year,
the Nigerian team excelled at the Puma ITF Wheelchair Tennis Futures in Abuja,
with Alex Adewale and Kafayat Omisore clinching the men’s and women’s title.
Adewale and double Paralympian Wasiu Yusuf also claimed the doubles title.
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