Sports minister, Suleiman Yusuf yesterday redeemed his pledge to reward medal winners with additional bonus. The minister yesterday morning splashed dollar on athletes that have won medals for Team Nigeria.
The Badminton team that won gold got 12,000 dollar reward, while the silver and bronze medals pocketed 1,000 and 750 dollars respectively. Dishing out the money, Yusuf said he decided not to waste anytime in rewarding the athletes as a way of motivating others to go for gold.
“I think the athletes now know that we mean business on our part. I want them to deliver and I will keep delivering on my part.”
?Yusuf said he will continue to move from one venue to the other to cheer the athletes declaring that he is not on holidays here in Maputo.
“I have moved from boxing to badminton to basketball. I will be wherever our athletes are competing to give them the needed support. I am not here on holidays. I wont wait in the hotel for anybody to tell me stories of how it went.”
Yusuf said he is optimistic the country will finish well at the games despite the fact that the hosts decided to remove sports in which Nigeria had competitive advantage.
“Our target before coming here is to finish amongst the first three on the final medals table and I see us achieving that,” he said.
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