Nigeria had chased the Afrobasket men’s title for over five decades without luck. Many Presidents came, did their best but the title eluded them.
One man came, his name Tijjani Umar, and started a process of re-building in 2009. Before he came, Nigeria had never won the ultimate prize, the gold. Nigeria’s first medal was 1995, a bronze, it was upgraded to silver in 1997, 1999 and 2003. We went back to bronze in 2005 and for two consecutive editions in 2007 and 2009, we never got to the medal zone.
However, in 2009, the mantle of leadership changed and Tijjani Umar came on board. Two years after he came, we got back into the medal zone and got a bronze in 2011.
From that bronze, he steered the team to qualify for the London 2012 Olympic Games, for the first time ever. With that spirit, we went to the 2013 Afrobasket with high hopes of picking the elusive gold. Even Fiba Africa acknowledged that fact.
Unfortunately we missed the gold but left with assurance from the players that they will return with a bang in 2015. And they did just that. They followed with a back to back qualification for another Olympics, this time in Rio in 2016.
However, that time, self interest rather than national ineterest had taken over and beclouded the sense of some stakeholders as well as some officials of the sports ministry.
A trophy chased by the country for over 5 decades was won and yet the heroes sneaked into the country without any fanfare. Even when the governmemt decided to host them months after, the haters of the Tijjani Umar led Board went to work, to spite Umar and in the process hurt the heroes who made Nigeria proud.
The devil took over the officials and they equated the Afrobasket heroes with the Golden Eaglets who won the U-17 World Cup that same year and recommended a reward of N600,000 for both teams. The players were first insulted when no reception was planned for them and again belittling them before the President.
I say this because the same officials who snubbed the Afrobasket Kings of 2015 and misled President Buhari have now deemed it right to honour and reward the Afrobasket women more than their male counterparts.
I am very happy that our heroines were honoured and rewarded properly and it will go ahead to motivate them to continue to do their best for our dear country.
But it must be stressed here that the non recognition of the male team’s efforts in 2015, together with the fact that one of those who today parade themselves as the authentic NBBF dubbed them foreigners because he wanted to undermine the victory which came under Umar’s tenure as NBBF president, could be the reason why most of the players may have shunned the call for another Afrobasket battle this year.
The official is shamelessly claiming that it is members of the Umar group who prevailed on them not to answer the national call. What short memory he has.
In all this, because some greedy sports ministry oficials who always complained that Umar never gave them a cut from the budget of the NBBF for competitions, they misled President Buhari by approving the same amount of rewards given to their younger brothers.
Thank you Mr President for receiving the victorious D’Tigresses and splashing N1m each on them.
