President Goodluck Jonathan targets 5 Gold Medals for Team Nigeria from Rio 2016 Olympics

Despite Team Nigeria‘s dismal performance at the recently concluded London 2012 Olympics, President Goodluck Jonathan has expressed his optimism in getting better results from the Rio 2016 Olympics.

The Minister of Sports and Chairman, National Sports Commission, Mr Bolaji Abdullahi, said on Channels Television yesterday that the President wants an early preparation for the next Games and expects no fewer than five gold medals.

“Mr. President believes if we start to work now we can win five gold medals in Rio in 2016. If we start to work towards that target, we may or may not meet it, but we must begin now to work towards it and believe it is possible.

“It seems we’re under pressure now; everybody is angry and outraged. But we must resist the temptation for reflex action. We can’t just start doing things because we want people to see that we’re responding to stimuli. That’ll be wrong and won’t be sustainable.

Mr Abdullahi noted that the Sports Ministry is about to outline a plan to get talented kids from across the federation for the forthcoming Common Wealth Games in 2014.

He added that it was not going to be an easy task to resuscitate Nigerian sports from many years of decay and collapse and that results of the added efforts must begin to show result in two years time.

“In Olympic term four years are nothing; we’re actually thinking of an eight-year plan. Some of the countries that did very well in London have already started preparing. We have to start now,” he said.