A Nigerian para powerlifter in the lightweight category Esther Oyema, has done the country proud at the on-going Commonwealth Games winning a gold medal and making a mess of the world record.
Two other Para weightlifters Nigerians also won gold medals
Roland Ezuruike won gold in the Men’s Lightweight with 224.3 points while in the Women’s Heavyweight final, Ndidi Nwosu polled 110.4 points for Nigeria’s third gold medal.
Oyema set a new world record with a 141.6kg lift in the women’s under 50kg class .
A silver medal went to another Nigerian,
Lucy Ejike, with a lift of 131.4kg. Another Nigerian, Paul Kehinde, got a silver medal.
According to Wikipedia, 36 years old Oyema competed in the women’s 61 kg event at the 2014 Commonwealth Games where she won a gold medal and set a new world recorld by lifting 122.4 kg in the heavyweight category. In 2015 she won a gold medal at the All-Africa Games by lifting 133 kg and beating her previous record 126 kg.
In the same year she traveled all the way to Almaty, Kazakhstan where she won another gold medal at the IPC Powerlifting Asian Open Championships by lifting 79 kg. During the 2016 Summer Paralympics she won a silver medal by beating her Mexican counterpart Amalia Perez in the women’s 55 kg lifting.