Kunle Adewale
Students and staff of Babcock University have expressed excitement with the new table tennis hall donated to the institution by the Vice President of the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF), Adesoji Tayo.
At the well-attended commissioning ceremony performed by the former Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Nigeria to UNESCO, Prof Michael Omolewa as well as the top management of the institution led by the President/Vice Chancellor, Prof Ademola Tayo were present to witness the official opening of the hall.
According to Omolewa, the hall would serve humanity and it is in line with UN’s ideal of engaging the youth in healthy rivalry through sports.
Omolewa commended the management of Babcock for their foresight while he hailed the NTTF Vice President for his large heart in putting the structure together for humanity.
For the Executive Vice President, ITTF and erstwhile President of NTTF, Wahid Oshodi said the hall would surely serve as a training camp for top players in the country in preparing them for major tournaments.
“This is a fantastic facility, and we hope the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) will make good use of this. It has everything you need, a center of excellence for young players and this is what we hope this will become and I will be working with the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) to see how we can assist in terms of equipment to support this facility. We must say a big thank you to Dr Adesoji Adetayo and his family for putting this at our disposal. It’s really emotional for me to have somebody investing so much in table tennis at a time like this when we know how difficult things are. So great credit to him and we hope the federation will make the best use of the facility,” Oshodi said.
For Tayo, the facility aims at helping young people fulfil their potential. “We are thinking beyond Nigeria, not just even Babcock University, we are looking at Africa as a whole. We need to have places where young players can be camped for a long period and that will be difficult to do in Lagos where we have a facility that could do that. So coming to Babcock University, you can see the environment, very conducive and it’s closed. So when you have players here camping, they can concentrate on learning the game for a long period of time and it’s our belief that with facilities like this, within a short period of time, we will rule the world in table tennis,” he said.
