At the ongoing Cadet and Junior African Fencing Championships in Lagos, President of Nigeria Fencing (NF), Adeyinka Samuel, on Saturday told the media that the federation would be training 10,000 fencers in Lagos as part of their efforts at grassroots development.
The competition began on March 1, at the Molade Okoya Thomas Hal, Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surelere, and is scheduled to come to an end on March 5.
The president of the federation added that since the sport was just seeing its first light in the country, training from primary to secondary level would be embarked on for children to get acquainted with the sport and for interested ones to gain means of learning and improving on their skills.
In attendance for the competition is a total of 22 countries with about 151 fencers. “We want to make the sport popular and we have greater things to make sure that we impress it in the minds of the children. We are already making progress as a country.” Samuel said.
He continued “We want to go for the younger generation to encourage those people who have yet to witness the sport. Some of our partners on this project have agreed with us. We also want to make it a grassroots thing and one of the projects is that we are working to have about 10,000 fencers in Lagos State.”
“We will be using the schools and assign coaches to train those children in the act of fencing at their free periods,’’ He added.
Speaking on the availability of training space for interested persons, the president of Nigeria Fencers Federation highlighted the low number of clubs and the low availability of proper training space. However, Training will first begin with schools.
“At the moment, we have few private clubs we have arranged with and at some point; the fencers will be training there. By and large, we as a federation will set up our own facilities where we will train our national athletes but the strategy first is to train them in their respective schools.” He said.
“We won’t bother the children to come to the club first, but we will take the training to the schools and each school will have its own structure and maybe a set time of two hours. Fencing is a good sport and I am its big fan not because I am a fencer but because of the discipline, focus, and concentration it has taught me,’’ He added.
