By Ime Bassey

President of the Nigerian Olympic Committee, Alhaji Sani Ndanusa has revealed that there is no monetary rewards disclosed by the government for the athletes participating at the on going 10th All Africa Games in the Mozambican capital, Maputo.

Speaking exclusively to Sunday Vanguard Sports, the former Sports Minister, opined that the exclusion of  Weightlifting and Wrestling from the Games by the organisers was mainly political than technical.

“For now, there is no pronouncement on monetary rewards from the government, but of course, athletes will be adequately encouraged to do their best at all levels. The most important thing is that, there are few injuries as the athletes have been training very hard for the Games in accordance with their various federations’ programme. Their arrival was good, creating a condition for acclimatisation as their movement within and outside the camp has been taken care of.

“Everything is working very fine. We look forward to a very good outing at the Games. Our only pain is the exclusion of weightlifting and wrestling from the  which are our strengths in terms of medals compared to other sports but we will try to complement with the rest sports we are competing in,” Ndanusa said

Asked about his feelings on the exclusion of both weightlifting and wrestling from the Games, the former President of the Nigeria Tennis Federation said, “we are aware of the organisers strategy, knowing that it is political rather than technical reasons they chose to omit both sports from the Games.

All we are after now, is to turn our disadvantage to advantages by making sure we do more than we have been doing in the sports that we are featuring in. Instead of crying over the issue, we had to forge ahead. Positioning ourselves properly ahead of the next edition bearing in mind a situation like this,” he added.