BY JACOB AJOM
Former national boxing coach, Obisia Nwakpa has assessed the performance of Nigerian boxers to the just-concluded 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games and concluded that the country did not deserve a better result than  the two bronze medals she got.

The former national and Commonwealth champion said in an interview with Sports Vanguard that boxing suffered from lack of adequate planning, poor funding and above all, the absence of of trained technical hands to handle the boxers.

“You don’t elevate amateur boxers to become coaches overnight and expect them to achieve anything meaningful at an international championship like the Commonwealth Games,”Obisia said.

“No matter how good a boxer is, he can never function as a coach except he is trained for that task.”

He said boxing administrators failed to plan ahead. “The normal thing to do was to organise an open screening or a national championship from where boxers would have been picked. Camp the selected boxers and go on training tours before they travel to the games,” Obisia said.

“This was not done. Instead, boxers were handpicked to go to an important assignment like the Commonwealth Games.”

He proffered that unless sports administrators adopt a new approach, boxing will continue to suffer in the hands of amateurs.

“We have a lot of boxers who can still bring honour to this country but those in charge of affairs lack experience and the necessary expertise to bring out the best in them. Most of them running the sport are ignorant and when ignorance takes over a place they turn it to politics.

“For instance, almost all the coaches who took our boxers to Glasgow are still amateur boxers. We taught them how to box but not how to coach.”