Nigeria’s Elizabeth Zannu made history at the African Games 2023 as she became the first ever athlete to win a medal in the arm wrestling event.
The 2023 games is the first time that the arm wrestling would be a scoring event, and Zannu became the first athlete to land a medal.
Zannu got into the history books after defeating Ghana’s Racheal Lankai in the women’s 55kg.
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In other sports, Team Nigeria beat Rwanda to win the bronze medal in women’s beach volleyball.
Esther Mbah and Pamela Bawa teamed up to win the 3rd place match 2-0: (22-20, 21-12).
Meanwhile, in the medal table Team Nigeria occupy second place with 25 gold, 18 silver and 25 bronze.
Egypt still occupy number one spot with 83 gold, 33 silver and 28 bronze medals.
6 Comments
Egypt 83 gold…..Nigeria 25 gold.
How did we get here….?!
Oh….I forgot, we once had as sports minsters Dalung, succeeded by Sunday Dare, and now Enoh.
Get here?!
It’s nothing new or recent. Egypt has topped the medal the last 3 or 4 African Games consecutively (doubt if Nigeria has ever topped the table), averaging about 40 more gold medals than Nigeria in second place.
While we and South Africa, Kenya, and most sub-Saharan African nations concentrate primarily on track and field, football and boxing, Egypt pays attention to a wide range of non-‘glamorous’ sports.
9jaRealist,
I don’t think Dr Drey meant our position vis a vis Egypt on the medals table.
Rather my guess is that he meant the gap in the overall number of medals accumulated. For Egypt to have 83 medals, Nigeria should be accumulating at least between 40 to 45 judging by previous games.
Bro, Egypt are untouchable now in Africa, I was shocked that even the new sport (arm wrestling), they still raked in 7 gold medals at the first day. Nigeria should sit up, we couldn’t win a single Gold medal in table tennis, a sport we used to sweep all the medals in the past.
Hahahaa Deo…..don’t mind that confused confusionist.
He will tell us if Nigeria has never finished above Egypt on the medals table b4….or if the gold medals gap between both countries has ever been as large as 60 gold medals apart.
Bottom line….there has been a very steep decline in sports development in Nigeria especially in the last decade and half, occasioned by the appointment
of the most useless and incompetent sports ministers Nigeria has ever had.
Almost all our sporting federations are in some form of turmoil of the other. They all struggle to organize leagues and cup tournaments. Grassroots development is practically dead. Even the National Sports Festival which used to be a biannual celebration has become epileptic
It’s just midway into the games and we are trailing by as much as 60 gold medals…..when it’s not the Olympics.
Whoever gave us that “giant of Africa” toga sold us a big fat lie.
We aren’t mates with Egypt in anything….!!!
I totally agree@Dr Drey.
Used to be giant of Africa, now the giant can’t see beyond her nose.
But I digress,
I was taken aback seeing how far behind we are against Egypt. Though, they have traditionally been number one in the medals table ( due to participating in more sports and then some), the big gap in the medals table is quite shocking most especially so early on. We should be neck to neck.
This means Egypt never rested on her oars, she practically improved, sustained her traditional ground and then diversified to not so familiar territory to harness more medals. That’s what we call ceasing the initiative. Ambition.
Nigeria simply lack leaders that are forsighted ,we have lazy myopic leaders with bo ounce of vision. We basically have no initiator, we are simply reactionary.
Do the government understand sports can be our recipe to success in many aspect; national pride, economic growth , infracstructure development, poverty alleviation, tourism, education and orientation, mental and physical health and international glory! Do those myopic minds we call leaders understand this? The dumb freaks simply don’t care.
The most worrying thing is that no change is happening soon. So we are practically stuck in limbo.
The supposed giant will keep running around naked in the town’s square as wiser men dictate the tune and move further ahead.