The All Nigeria/Cross River State Athletics Championships scheduled to start on Thursday will see five Nigeria's African champions competing for honours as well as many new faces.
Current Nigeria and Africa 100m champion, Blessing Okagbare will be defending her title at the U.J Esuene stadium against former champion, Damola Osayomi, Agnes Osazuwa and another hot shot in the 100m women race, United State born sprinter, Gloria Asumnu.
Okagbare, who won the 100m and long jump gold at the 17th African Championship last August in Nairobi, Kenya will also be aiming to join the class of Mary Onyali and Endurance Ojokolo who won the blue ribbon gold three times consecutively.
Another African champion who will add color and class to the championship is sprinter, Oludamola Osayomi, the fastest Nigerian woman so far this year.
Osayomi won the 200m gold last year in Nairobi at the African Championships and she is double sprints gold medalist at the 9th All Africa Games held four years ago in Algiers.
She will be aiming to wrestle the 100m crown from the woman who deposed her in 2009.On current form; she looks unstoppable with her African leading 10.99 seconds return.
Sprint hurdles queen, Seun Adigun, who arrived the country on Sunday and like Africa triple jump king, Tosin Oke only recently switched allegiance to Nigeria.
Adigun is the reigning national and African champion and she will have Jessica Ohanaja to contend with if she is desirous of making it gold number two at the championships.
Also in town to add colours to the trials is African and Commonwealth triple jump king, Tosin Oke who will also be defending the title he won last year.
Oke, a former British junior international has had a remarkable change in fortune since he switched his allegiance to Nigeria three years ago.
National High jump queen, Doreen Amata, reigning All Africa Games queen is also around to reclaim the title she surrendered last year without a fight.
She took a year off track and field for procreation and looks set to be crowned queen again. She holds the best mark by a Nigerian nay African jumper so far this year at 1.90m which looks a bridge too far for her adversaries to think of crossing.
Veteran Shot Putter, Marian Ibekwe who turned the hand of the clock in Nairobi by winning the shot put gold is also in town for the event.
Ibekwe is one of the veterans of the All Nigeria Athletics Championships. She won the Shot Put title three times back-to-back from 1989 to 1991 and is favored once again to make it gold number eight in the event.
Ebewele expects
Meanwhile, Former Edo state commissioner for Sports, Brown Ebewele says the showdown between former 100m national champion Damola Osayomi and current national and Africa champion, Blessing Okagbare during the All Nigeria Championships 2011 can be likened to that of World 100m champion Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell.
Ebewele said Nigerians cannot wait to watch the race as he will be going to Calabar just to watch the race.
'Jujuman', as he is often called, said from his own understanding of both athletes, Blessing is more street smart than Osayomi and thinks she will use that against the former champion Damola, who lost her crown to Blessing Okagbare in 2009.
"This race is going to be a war as Osayomi will want to reclaim her title while Okagbare will want to maintain her position as number in Nigeria and Africa.
"We all saw Bolt's comeback race against Asafa Powell recently and it was electrifying. That is what this race will look like but I will give it to Okagbare because of her intelligence, she will use that against Osayomi despite her running 10.99 recently in Brazil."
However, Ebewele bemoans the poor finishing time by athletes during the finals of the Golden League in Warri.
He said with this time so far, he doesn't see how they will be able to run against the professionals coming in for the trials.
The former AFN board member said the 10.44 seconds done by Egwero is not encouraging as 100m men are now running under 10 seconds in competitions.