D’Tigers’ qualifiers confusion

HAMSTRUNG by lack of funds, Nigeria’s male national basketball team, D’Tigers, announced its withdrawal from the Paris Olympics Afrobasket qualifiers on Wednesday. This was made known via a post on its X  handle on Wednesday. The Afrobasket qualifiers are scheduled to begin today in Monastir, Tunisia. The post read: “Despite several 2020 Olympians committing (to the games), D’Tigers will forfeit this AfroBasket qualifiers window due to lack of funds from government.” However, yesterday morning, it emerged that the team will be competing at the 2025 Afrobasket qualifiers after all. According to reports, the Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) made last-minute attempts for D’Tigers to play this weekend following interventions by the Minister for Sports Development, Senator John Owan Enoh, who was said to have urged the NBBF leadership to do all that it could to ensure D’Tigers’ participation in the qualifiers, promising that the necessary funds would be approved and released within the next three weeks to cover the flight tickets of the team, allowances and other logistics.  The team was reported to have thereafter headed to Tunisia and was expected to arrive just in time to begin the campaign.

The NBBF President, Ahmadu Musa Kida,  said “Even though this is coming late, it is heart-warming that our boys will eventually take part in the qualifiers for the 2025 Afrobasket championship. The board of the NBBF is deeply grateful to the Honorable Minister of Sports, Senator John Owan Enoh, for his timely support and of course saving the country from disgrace and another FIBA ban.” Kida assured Nigerian basketball fans that despite the shoddy preparations, the boys would put up their best to make the country proud by getting a qualification ticket.

To be sure, basketball fans who had expressed shock at the national team’s withdrawal from the 2025 qualifiers will by now be heaving a sigh of relief. Nigerians had been similarly put in a tailspin on May 12, 2022 when, following the protracted crisis in the NBBF, the Federal Government announced Nigeria’s withdrawal from international basketball for two years, putting players, coaches, administrators and other stakeholders in limbo. According to the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the decision was to, among other things, enable the authorities to revamp the game in the country and lay the leadership tussle in the NBBF to rest once and for all. As a follow-up, on May 23, 2022, the government appointed a 10-man Interim Management Committee (IMC) to manage basketball in the country until the restoration of normalcy.

As we noted then, in affiliating with FIBA, Nigeria undertook to abide by its rules and regulations, including non-interference in its internal affairs. It was, therefore, escapist, fraudulent and absurd to withdraw from that commitment just because of crisis within the NBBF. We added that since the Kida faction of the NBBF was the globally recognised basketball authority in Nigeria, it amounted to a complete waste of time and energy to be giving attention to other factions. Fortunately, the government heeded the counsel, but then failed to address the perennial problems that had dogged Nigeria’s participation at major sporting events. In the present case, it is quite unfortunate that it had to take the NBBF’s public announcement of withdrawal from the Paris Olympics Afrobasket qualifiers to jolt the Ministry of Sports into action, and even at that, all that the team and its crew have is a promissory note. The tragedy in this scenario is that Nigerians are being forced to cite the government’s monetary provisions for the Super Eagles’ AFCON 2023 campaign and the rewards given the team after the tournament as evidence of government’s disinterest in non-footballing sporting events. Yet if evidence over the years is anything to go by, there is hardly any sporting category or event that has been approached with the requisite administrative and governmental support. Nigerian teams and players have often had to defy official lethargy and disappointment to fight for medals.

We urge the sports ministry and the NBBF to seek ways of addressing the funding and other challenges that face D’Tigers and the other national teams. This is, of course, without prejudice to the fact that  the male national side has to step up its game, having failed over the years to live up to billing. Apart from emerging Afrobasket champions in 2015, the team ended as runners-up on four different occasions while claiming the bronze on three occasions. By contrast, the female national team, D’Tigress, won a fourth consecutive Afrobasket title last year and followed it up with qualification for the Olympic Games in Paris. Nigerians will be hoping that the team shelves some of its accustomed lethargy even as the government continues to receive criticism for its poor handling of basketball in the country.