Head Coach of the na
tional handball team, Fidelis Obi,  on Thursday said the players at his disposal were fit and capable of excelling at the upcoming African Nations Cup.
Obi told newsmen in Abuja that he was going to have his final list of 18 male players for the competition by next week after playing two friendly matches.
The Tide source reports that the competition which is scheduled for January 20 to January 31 will hold in Cairo, Egypt.
“I rate my boys very high because at the last African Games, at Brazzaville in Congo, we finished fourth position, and I believe our performance shall improve at this championship.
“But we are looking forward to see if we can have the opportunity of playing at the World Championship in France and the Olympics.
“We initially had 26 players and two coaches, with some other members of the technical crew. But now we have 22 players after screening.
“We are going to pick our final list by next week when we are done with playing two friendly matches.
“Then we will cut it down to 18 players, and those are the ones that will travel for the competition,’’ the coach said.
Obi however pointed out that even though the fitness level of the players was high, they still needed to play foreign friendlies to ensure a better performance.
“We have achieved greatly, because the rate of the fitness level of the players has been improving day by day and we are trying to see how to coordinate this for better performance.
“But for the team to play as a team, we can only achieve that by playing all the friendly matches we can get.
“So, we are also looking forward to playing some friendly matches outside the country, either in Republic of Benin, Ghana or Togo, and maybe before January 18,’’ he said.
Though he expressed his disappointment at their failure to play competitions in 2015, Obi was however optimistic that 2016 would be better.
“2015 was not that good as we had very few championships in the country and the African Games was the only championship we had.
“We were given the opportunity to camp for one month and that was why we performed well by getting into the semi-finals.
“Though it was not an easy task but we were able to, with that performance, get the Confederation of African Handball (CAHB) to give us some spots to play in the Nations Cup and Olympics qualifier,’’ the coach said.
He was optimistic his team was capable of doing well in 2016 if the encouragement was there, especially from the National Sports Commission (NSC) and the Handball Federation of Nigeria (HFN). “Because motivation is very important for the team right now. In fact, with little motivation we will go places this year.
“This is the first championship for handball in the African level and we hope to do well.
“If this happens, it will pave way for the other national teams, especially the junior teams in the junior championships coming up in Africa,’’ Obi said.