ABUJA – President Muhammadu Buhari Wednesday announced cash reward of N1 million each for members of the national women’s basketball team, D’Tigress for winning the 2017 Afrobasket tournament in Mali.
The team members were hosted by the President at the Council Chamber prior to the commencement of the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting.
He also announced cash reward of N500,000 each for the officials, directing the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun to release the money promptly.
An elated President Buhari thanked the team for putting in their best to emerge victorious and also qualify for the FIBA 2018 Women’s Basketball World Cup in Spain.
The team captain, Aisha Mohammed, had this to say about the cash reward: “that will motivate us to do more by the grace of God.
“We feel overjoyed that the President invited us to come here. We are excited. We promise to give Nigeria more victories and by the grace of God we will go to Spain and win.”
Recalling how they won in Mali, Aisha said, “We played as a team, we believed in each other. As our coach said ‘don’t stop playing until you hear the last blast of the whistle’ and that was what we did and we came out victorious”.
Speaking after the ceremony, the President of Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF), Musa Ahmadu Kida, said
attributed the success of the team to the democratic process that has returned to the federation, adding that if the team could achieve this result in three weeks of the new executive, they will repeat the same feat in Spain.
“For Spain I’m just going to tell you this, we are going to do excellently well. We are going to try to do much better than we did on the African Championship hoping that we will come within the best three.”
