Athletes Burn Calabar Tracks

The 65th Athletics Federation Championship gets underway in Calabar, Cross River State with the opening ceremony taking place this afternoon.

Governor Liyel Imoke is scheduled to declare the tournament open. Both local and foreign-based Nigerian athletes have converged on Calabar to jostle for slots to feature in the forthcoming All Africa Games in Maputo, Mozambique in September.

Report from Calabar early today says that apart from the hitches in the accreditation of sports journalists, all other organisational aspects of the tourney are in good order.

The staff and executives of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, AFN, are already on ground to ensure a smooth organisation of the competition bankrolled by the Cross River State government to the tune of N250million. This huge fund has given the Solomon Ogba-led AFN the opportunity to review upward the prize money for winners.

—Emmanuel Una/Calabar