Table tennis quartet Taiwo Mati, Muiz Adegoke, Mustapha Mustapha and Samuel Boboye will play no part in this month’s World Youth Championships.
The tournaments will serve off in Tunisia from December 4 to 11.
This move comes after Nigeria missed out on the 2022 ITTF World Championships in Chengdu, China last September.
It was learnt that the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation officially wrote to the International Table Tennis Federation about its decision to withdraw the boys’ team from the championships due to paucity of funds.
Nigeria’s withdrawal means Africa’s slot will be handed over to Egypt in Tunisia and also deny the boys the needed exposure and ranking points.
NTTF president, Ishaku Tikon, who rued the withdrawal, said the federation had written to the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development in October about the championship and made several visits to the ministry to secure funds.
“I knew what these boys went through before qualifying for this tournament and for two months we had written to the ministry about the trip, but we did not get any result from all the visits as the excuse was that there were no funds,” Tikkon said.
Punch
