In continuation of its 2016 calendar, the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) is planning to stage a six-day national competition tagged Nigeria Open Championships.
Over nine events will be competed at the N2m prize money championship holding at the National Training Centre in National Stadium.
To give junior players the opportunity to test strength with their senior counterparts, the tournament will have junior team and singles events as well as singles, team, and doubles events in the senior category.
For the President of NTTF, Wahid Oshodi, the tournament is meant to complement efforts being made by the federation to unearth talents.
“The tournament is meant to complement our efforts at ensuring the players are in top shape at all times. The Federation is also seeking the next generation of national team players at both senior and junior levels. We must have players ready to challenge and take over from the likes of Segun Toriola.
“Our junior team has done exceedingly well over the last couple of years but we have discovered new very young players at our U-16 League and during the Premier Lotto Nigeria Open and this will be another opportunity for our coaches to assess them. We need to keep the players busy. We still have a busy schedule after the Olympics till the end of the year with the African Senior Championships, World Junior Championships, Clubs League, second phase of the U-16 League and the Presidents Cup, so we must continue our development and ensure we have programmes to develop our players coaches administrators and umpires,” the NTTF boss said.
According to the tournament prospectus, states and clubs wishing to participate shall be registered with the NTTF and due to logistics, only the states that meet the deadline for submission of entries shall be accepted to participate with each team made up of three players.
“Only players registered by States which are affiliated to the NTTF are eligible to participate. All players shall hold the current NTTF Player’s License, which must be produced on demand.
States and clubs shall ensure that their players are properly registered for the Championships by completing the registration form obtainable from the Secretary of NTTF, attaching one passport photograph of each player to the completed form,” the prospectus stated.
For the team event, the Olympic format will be used in order to acquaint the players with the new system. The team event shall be played in Groups of round robin followed by a knock-out stage. All matches shall be best of five games.
The singles events shall be on knock-out basis with matches from the preliminary rounds up to the round of 32 shall be best of five games. Doubles events shall be on knock-out basis and shall be best of five games.
