Nigeria’s Wahid Enitan Oshodi has been elected as an executive vice president of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the world tennis body held on Wednesday, 24 November in Houston, Texas, in the United States of America.

Oshodi polled 116 of 136 votes which amounted to 85.29% of the total vote to win the largest share of the votes among the 14 candidates that contested for the seven offices of the ITTF Executive Vice President.

Oshodi becomes just the second Nigerian to be elected to the world body after Segun George and he will serve along seven other Executive Vice Presidents elected at the AGM.

Sweden’s Petra Sorling became the first woman to be elected as President of ITTF.

She clinched the office of the 95-year-old international federation unopposed having been nominated by the Swedish Table Tennis Association and accepted by all the 226 member associations across the world.

Egypt’s Alaa Meshref was reelected into the Executive Committee of the ITTF marking the first time Africa will have two representatives on the Executive Committee. Other elected Vice Presidents are Graham Symons (Australia), Alaor Azevedo (Brazil), Liu Guoliang (China), Roland Natran (Hungary), Masahiro Maehara (Japan) and Khalil Al-Mohannadi (Qatar).

The new president of the ITTF and the eight elected vice presidents will join the ITTF Athletes Commission Chair Zoran Primorac of Croatia and IOC Member Ryu Seungmin of Korea Republic to form the complete ITTF Executive Committee (EC).

From a humble start as Chairman, Lagos State Table Tennis Association (LSSTA) and following his exceptional performance in that post, Oshodi was appointed Commissioner for Sports in Lagos State under Governor Babatunde Fashola (2011-2015). He also served as the President of the Nigeria Table Tennis Federation (NTTF) from 2013-2017 and was later appointed as the Chairman of the Nomination Committee of ITTF.

Earlier this year, Oshodi was elected as the Deputy President of African Table Tennis Federation (ATTF). He is an engineer and a lawyer.