National Judo Championship held in Ibadan, President of the Nigeria Judo Federation, Prince Timothy Nsirim said qualifying for the Olympics was top on his board’s agenda.

 But indications have emerged that his dream could just a mere wishful thinking as the federation doesn’t have the funds to prosecute the qualifying series. The members of the board contributed money to organize the recently concluded national championship.

 However, the board couldn’t raise funds to send a team to the Cotonou Invitational billed for the Republic of Benin capital between July 20 and July 22. The board which is desperate to fly Nigeria’s flag at the Cotonou event approached the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps and the Nigeria Police to assist with funds.

 The two organizations agreed to assist but on the condition that the judokas that should be in Cotonou must be their athletes a condition, the federation agreed with. Thus Nigeria will be in Cotonou with a lean team of five judokas made up of three females and two males.

 Judo which failed to make it to the London 2012 Olympics after failing to survive the qualifiers is not among the favoured sports of the National Sports Commission.

Six sports are on that list which was recently released by the Sports Minister, MallamBolajiAbdullahi. The sports are football, shooting, wrestling, taekwondo, athletics and boxing. 

Nigeria has missed a couple of championship which are scoring events for qualification of the Olympics and the trend could continue if the federation fails to seek funds from elsewhere or seek some divine intervention to get the NSC include judo on the list of favoured sport.