Africa’s first-ever bobsled team, made up of three Nigerian female athletes, will this week grace the studios of CNN International’s popular magazine programme, African Voices sponsored by telecommunications giant, Globacom.
The inspiring team comprises Akuoma Omeoga, Seun Adigun and Ngozi Onwumere who are scheduled to represent Africa in the sport for the first time at the 2018 Winter Olympics holding from February 9 to 25 in South Korea.
Globacom disclosed that the trio will feature alongside two other athletes from Ghana and Uganda whom CNN described as “conquering sports that are rarely found on the continent”.
Though his roots are in Surulere, Lagos, Seun Adigun was raised in Chicago, United States, and was a track and field athlete before she developed a passion for bobsled. A rookie brakewoman in the USA Women’s Bobsled team who, in 2016, pioneered what has become the first-ever African Bobsled Team with Nigeria, Adigun coordinates the Nigerian Bobsled team.
The two other team members, Omeoga and Onwumere, are brakewomen for the team. A former collegiate Track and Field athlete for the University of Minnesota, USA, Omeoga is from Umuahia, Abia State, while Onwumere, who is from Umuchima, Imo State, represented Nigeria in Track & Field in the 2015 All African games held in the Republic of the Congo.
Also featuring on the programme is Ghanaian sprinter, Akwasi Frimpong, who has been described by CNN as a “former sprinter making both history and his Olympic dreams come true as the country’s first-ever skeleton slider”.
Similarly, Brolin Mawejje, a “snowboarder from Uganda whose love of the slopes comes not just from a desire to compete, but to also change lives through the sport,” will equally be featured on the programme.
African Voices comes on air on CNN at 11.30 a.m. on Friday while the repeat editions come up at 7 a.m. and 4.30 p.m. on Saturday and at 12.30 a.m., 4.30 a.m. and 8 p.m. on Sunday. Further repeats will also run at 5 a.m. on Monday and at 10.30 a.m. on Tuesday.
