African Championships: Nigeria’s women in top form – and a surprise medal for lowest-ranked athlete
Nigeria finished top of the medals table at the African Championships, which ended in Mauritius at the weekend. Nigeria’s four female champions, led by 20-year-old Onome Didih, finished first, second, third and fifth in the individual rankings.
Egypt had the top-ranked male in 81kg champion Mohamed Younes, a silver medallist at last year’s World Junior Championships. Egypt also had the best youth performer in 15-year-old Basma Ramadan, who set a continental clean and jerk youth record in winning the women’s 49kg on 68-88-156.
Onome Didih (NGR)
A record 22 nations took part including three who had never sent an athlete to an international competition – Liberia, Mauritania and Cape Verde.
The Gambia had six athletes listed on the IWF database, all born at least 35 years ago, but none of them ever recorded a result outside the Commonwealth Games, which is not an IWF event. Now, after an unlikely series of events, Muhammed Njie from The Gambia has not only a result, but a medal – despite the fact that he finished 40th and last in the individual rankings.
Njie snatched 90kg, considerably less than his body weight, in the 109kg category. Junior Ngadja from Cameroon made 161kg, the former youth world champion Aymen Touairi from Algeria made 166kg, and the Tokyo Olympian Aymen Bacha from Tunisia recovered from two failures to lead on 172kg at halfway.
Njie, 31, then made 130kg in clean and jerk and sat back to watch his three rivals, all of whom opened at least 70kg higher. Bacha and Touairi both bombed out, collectively failing six times on 203kg.
Mohamed Younes (EGY)
Ngadja won on 161-206-367 and Njie was the only other finisher. Despite the fact that his 220kg total left him bottom of the individual list on 103.87 Robi points, he had silver in clean and jerk and total.
Younes scored 738 points in first place after winning his second African senior title at the age of 20. His 162kg snatch was 6kg below Li Dayin’s junior world record, set in 2018. Younes made 162-183-345 from five good lifts, which was 5kg lower than his effort at the World Juniors seven months ago.
Samir Fardjallah from Algeria, the African Games champion, was second in the 81kg contest and the individual rankings to Younes on 152-180-332.
Karem Ben Hnia from Tunisia had the third highest Robi points total when he won his ninth continental title. Ben Hnia declined his final attempt after making 142-176-318 to win at 73kg.
In the women’s Robi list, Didih was well ahead of team-mates Rafiatu Lawal and Sarah Matthew. She weighed in light before winning at 55kg on 92-111-203, and will now switch to the new 53kg category for her next big targets, this year’s World Championships and the 2026 Commonwealth Games. Didih was fifth on her international debut at last year’s World Championships in Bahrain, where she totalled 200kg.
Lawal made 95-118-213 to win by a huge margin at 59kg, and Matthew posted the biggest women’s total of the Championships on 107-130-237 to win at 76kg. Matthew, 18, declined her final attempt.
Nigeria’s other winner was Ruth Ayodele at 64kg, on 213kg. Joseph Umoafia and Tuesday Emmanuel were men’s silver medallists at 73kg and 67kg.
By Brian Oliver