Nigeria’s Segun Gets ITTF Merit Award

To recognise his outstanding contribution to table tennis globally, Nigeria’s George Segun is the only Africa honoured among the six honorees by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) with a Merit Award – the highest honour by the world body.
Segun, a former Executive, Vice President of ITTF was honoured during the ITTF Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia alongside five other personalities in the world.
Segun, a former President of the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) and Ex-President of the African Table Tennis Federation (ATTF) and now Chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee of ITTF was given the award alongside Khalil AL-MOHANNADI, Jean-Francois KAHN, Koji KIMURA, Zdenko KRIZ, and Tony YUE.
Meanwhile, Budapest, Hungary has been awarded the rights to host the 2019 World Table Tennis Championships as approved by the 2016 ITTF AGM.
With this, the 55th edition of the world’s biggest table tennis event, will be held in the SYMA event hall in the Hungarian capital, a venue that last month was approved by top ITTF official as worthy of hosting the individual championships.
ITTF’s President, Thomas WEIKERT stated: “This year’s AGM went very smoothly with positive discussion amongst the delegates representing 124 National Associations. Budapest presented a very impressive bid to the members, and I am confident that our Hungarian friends will put on a fantastic show for us in three years’ time.”
Other significant news at the AGM was that the Chairman of the ITTF Athletes Commission was voted to be a full member on the ITTF Executive Committee (till now the Commission was represented with voting rights on the Board of Directors and without voting rights at the EC). Thanks to this decision, the ITTF Athletes’ Commission Chairman, Vladimir Samsonov could take his seat immediately in the ITTF Executive Committee as full member.