Olawale Ajimotokan in Abuja
The Badminton Federation of Nigeria (BFN) has proposed to hold oral and written interviews for the 33 candidates that applied for the national coaching jobs on March 13 and 15.
The decision was one of the resolutions taken by the BFN board at its meeting over the weekend in Abuja.
BFN President, Francis Orbih, said it resolved to employ a head coach for the senior and junior teams in addition to two assistants for each of those teams.
Orbih said the technical committee will subsequently recommend the most suitable candidates it thinks should be employed to the advertised positions, based on performance in those two interviews, to the board.
This position is a dramatic shift by BFN which in the past had just one individual that combined the function as the national coach for the senior and junior teams.
The president said BFN resolved to employ local coaches as it could not afford a foreign coach on fulltime role.
The board also announced the dissolution of the coaches, the umpires and the players associations. It said there was a need to elect new members as the concerned executive bodies had been in office for close to over five years.
“At the meeting, the umpires association made a presentation that they plan to have their election by April and we have actually asked the three association to forward to the federation their constitutions. The umpires association submitted its constitution and our observation was that it should be updated because it seems it was done quite a while ago. For the other two associations, the board decided to dissolve their executives and put in a place a three-man committee to run the affairs of those associations into having elections to elect a new Exco,†Orbih said.
Four of the national players will hit Indonesia from March 9 for two months exchange programme while the nation’s top female player will tour Europe for one month, courtesy of the Badminton Federation of Africa (BCA).
Orbih, however, lamented the exclusion of Badminton by the Ministry of Sports as one of the sports listed for the Commonwealth Games in April.
He said Nigeria which excelled at the All Africa Individual Championship in Algeria remains the best in Africa.
He lamented that while six African countries will be represented at the Commonwealth Games, Nigeria, the continent’s powerhouse will be excluded.
“I tell you it’s a very touchy issue. Before we went to Algeria, we were informed we were dropped from the Commonwealth list. I asked why and the feelers we got was that we are not seen to be likely medal winners. I found it a bit interesting because you can never know who will win a medal until a person goes to participate,†concludes the BFN chief.
