Abubakar raises the alarm over slow preparation for Paris 2024 Olympics

Africa’s former number one tennis player, Prof. Sadiq Abubakar, has raised the alarm over the country’s poor preparation for the Paris 2024 Olympics barely one year to the Games.

The Paris 2024 Olympic Games will hold from July 26 to August 11.

Abubakar, who participated in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, said leaving preparations for the Games to a few months before the competition means Nigeria would only go to Paris as a participant and not medals contender.

Apart from athletics, he said nothing seems to be happening in other events; even in those sports the country has competitive advantage.

“Other nations started preparing for Paris 2024 Olympics a day after the last one in Japan. They know who is not going to cut it and they have been preparing and supporting those that will make it.

“They have a calendar right from the beginning and they stay with the calendar till competition time.

“For all these nations that take the Olympics very serious, funding for the Games is already secured and all they worry is about is performance and how to improve their athletes.

“For Nigeria, that is not the case. After every Olympics, everybody goes away until a few months to the next Games.

“It is the responsibility of the national sports federations, who should have identified their elite athletes and then started preparing them.

“The last Sports Minister, Sunday Dare, said we would only participate in the few sports that we have comparative advantage. We should have been training athletes in those sports, attending local and international competitions to put them in competition mood.”

The adjunct professor at Florida International University and Miami Dade College described athletics as the only federation ready for the Games,