By Solomon Nwoke
NIGERIA’S London 2012 Olympic medal hopeful in the female freestyle wrestling, Amarachi Obiajunwa has called on the federal government to release funds to facilitate their preparation for the Summer Games.

For Obiajunwa, London 2012 would be her second time to the Olympic Games as she was part of Team Nigeria to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China.

As a first timer then, she made impressive showing, especially at the early stages, before crashing out at the quarter finals to United States’ Ali Bernard.

Obiajunwa again, at the Africa/Oceania Olympic qualification made her mark winning a gold medal alongside, Blessing Oborodudu (63kg class) and Adibo Dick 84kg class) that gave Nigeria additional three slots, making a total of four for the Games.

Recounting her experience in the recently concluded qualifier in Marrakech, Morocco, Obiajunwa expressed  delight in not just winning a gold, but in picking a slot for the Olympics.

She however lamented that their preparation for the Games proper has not been anything to write home about due to lack of funds.

“My motivation  to win an Olympic medal depends on how much the federal government can come to our aid in terms of proper preparation for the Games so that our morale for medals can be high. This is my second appearance in the Games and I cannot afford not to win a medal.

I will do my best to bring back home an Olympic medal. I have no fear of any athlete in my weight category that can pose any threat to me during the Games because our Technical Adviser, Dr Daniel Igali is doing his best to put us on the threshold of Olympic medal come London 2012 Games”, she said.

For Igali, the dream is beyond mere qualification for the Games but to wrest medals. He said that much needed to be done if the nation hoped to win medals, pointing out that current preparations were far from being enough.

“The training and preparation for the Games are inadequate for them to win medals. Their current state of preparations is not adequate to make them medal hopefuls,” Igali said, but was however, optimistic that more could still be done within the next four months to make a remarkable difference.

“A lot can happen in four months if we intensify our preparations. If we can prepare well, if we can expose these athletes to more tournaments before the Olympics, anything can happen for good”, he said.