Hammed Craving to Change the Face of Sambo in Nigeria

Vice President of Sambo Association of Nigeria (SAN) Sheriff Hammed believes the country’s participation at the African Games in Ghana would help to raise awareness about the sport. He spoke on the essence of the sport, as well as other benefits of the sport to Nigerian athletes

For Sheriff Hammed, after Nigeria must have participated at the African Games in Ghana, the sport of Sambo would not remain the same in the country.

Sambo is similar in many ways to judo and jujutsu but also incorporates different types of wrestling and various self-defense systems. The most interesting thing about sambo is that it’s a combination of all the martial arts.

“We intend to organise different seminars and training programmes and work with the School Sports Federation in other to develop and promote the sports in Nigeria. And we are hoping to have the first sambo demonstration at the next National Youth Games in Ogun later this year.

On how Nigerians will get involved with the sport, he said, “Myself and my co pioneer, Mrs Loveth Howell and the president have got our plans in place. We hope to organise seminars and training programmes across the country and possibly have the first sambo demonstration at the next National Sport festival in Ogun State later this year and introduce Sambo to all schools in Nigeria, working and meeting the School Sports Federation in order to develop Sambo here in Nigeria. As we speak we have athletes in all states of the federation.

“We want to be the best in the world and definitely we want to be at the Olympics and most importantly to use sambo to do things differently in sporting development and sport administration and marketing mostly in combating sport as we need to start doing things differently here in Nigeria. We intend to engage a lot of our youth to impact the society and solve most of our societal problems in Nigeria.

According to him, Sambo is a martial art and combat sport developed and used by the Soviet Red Army in the early 1920s to improve their hand-to-hand combat abilities.

“Nigeria has been involved in sambo sport for a while now but mainly in the United Kingdom with some of our UK based athletes and we think it’s high time it’s introduced here in Nigeria.

Nigeria sambo is not operating in isolation as it is affiliated with several international bodies and federations.

The federation is affiliated to the British Sambo Federation, Africa Sambo Confederation and sports world governing body-Fédération Internationale de Sambo.

With Nigeria competing at the Africa Game, Sheriff said the athletes are ready to don the country’s colours.

“Nigeria will be at the games with the best sambo fighters we discovered and had been naturing in the country and I can assure you they are always ready to go out there to make the country proud as we have been training them for the past few months now for the games since we got invited by the African Confederation through our affiliation and this All-Africa games won’t be an exception. The athletes who will be flying the colours for Nigeria are Kajido Jonah 79kg, Chegwan timkat James 58kg, Fatima Ogbonyomi 65kg and Charity Jatau 59kg.”