Nigeria picked up two Silver medals in the team event of Table Tennis at the African Games 2023 in Accra, Ghana on Friday.
In the final of the team event both the men and women lost to Egypt.
In the men’s category, Egypt won 3-0 while also for the women, Egypt triumphed 3-0.
Team Nigeria ended its participation in the Table Tennis event, with three silver and one bronze medals.
Earlier, in the men’s singles final, Quadri Aruna lost to rival Omar Assar of Egypt 4-3.
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Then for the women, Offiong Edem clinched bronze after also losing to her Egyptian opponent in the semi-finals.
The 13th African Games in Accra, Ghana, will officially begin today (Friday) with the opening.
On Thursday, Nigeria’s Flying Eagles lost 2-1 to Uganda in their opening Group B match.
Their next group game comes up on Monday, 11 March against South Sudan.
2 Comments
We have finally surrendered our leadership in TT to Egypt, in both male and female categories. So unfortunate. I remember in 1995 AAG, we won 7 gold medals in this sport. And I still don’t understand why Omar Assar keeps beating Aruna every now and then, even with Aruna’s higher global ranking. It’s so embarrassing, tbh.
What is more embarassing Papafem is the fact that we still cant find young ones who can send the likes of Edem Offiong to retirement.
Dont get me wrong, I have no problems at all seeing offiong still winning medals for Nigeria in 2003 since winning gold for us 20 years ago in 2003 when we hosted the games in Abuja. Infact, I felt so elated seeing that she’s following in the footsteps of Funke Oshonaike and Bose Kaffo who played way into their 40s.
My grouse is in the fact that the younger ones are not showing enough readiness to take over from these veterans. Trials and qualification match-ups are often held before the country’s representatives are picked for these competitions and the fact that the veterans are unbeatable for the young ones simply means the problems are more deep rooted.
So for me, it is not too surprising seeing Egypt overtaking us in Table Tennis in 2023.