Between D’Tigers and ‘Tigresses, by Patrick Omorodion

In the Book of James, chapter 4 and verse 6, we are told that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. When a man knows in his heart that a feat wasn’t achieved by the effort put in his plan for a task but goes ahead to claim the glory resulting from the success of that task, God will surely expose him.

Why am I saying this? I have chosen to write on the claim by lackeys of the outgoing president of the Nigeria Basketball Federation, NBBF, Musa Kida that he is the best thing that has ever happened to basketball in Nigeria.

And this claim is as a result of the recent performance of the country’sseniorwomen’sbasketballteam,theD’Tigresses atthe 2025 Afrobasket championship in Cote d’Ivoire.

The ladies made up mostly of Nigerians born abroad and a handful who graduated from playing in the local league but now live abroad playing competitive basketball, won their fifth consecutive African title, bringing their total to seven, having also won in 2003 and 2005 consecutively.

One of Kida’s lackeys, shortly after Vice President Kashim Shettima hosted the victorious team on behalf of President Bola Tinubu, wrote that since Kida “took the reins of the Nigeria Basketball Federation from Tijjani Umar, it has been an upward surge for basketball in Nigeria”.

He added that Kida spends his “personal hard-earned finances and resources to propagate and promote the development of the game in Nigeria, with little or no financial assistance from the relevant sports authorities”.

The same man while praise-singing Kida, contradicted himself in the same story, stressing that, “whilst Mali and Senegal, had the opportunities to train and tour in Europe for about three months and playing top quality friendly games, D’Tigresses only camped for a few days due to financial constraints” .

Why couldn’t the same Kida who spends his “personal money to propagate Nigeria’s basketball” spend the same money to prepare the ladies like Senegal and Mali did? Is it not safe therefore, to say that the Rena Wakama-tutored side won, not because the Kida Board prepared them well for the competition but that they were determined to play and make history for themselves?

It was like God was waiting to expose the same super rich Kida his lackey said bankrolls the national teams with little or no support from the country’s sports authorities with the male version of the Afrobasket in Angola.

Like their female counterparts who had no preparation, the men arrived late for a botched hurriedly arranged championship following the lack of funds for proper camping and training before leaving for Luanda, venue of the 2025 Afrobasket championship for men.

Apart from the foreign-based players arriving close to the tournament or on the day of the start, which could hinder team cohesion and chemistry, there were questions about why the “best” foreign players were not on the list.

Lack of preparations showed in their first game against Mozambique as the star player, Josh Okogie struggled all through, managing to score only five points.

With their Nigeria-based coach, Abdulrahman Mohammed, they were determined to make an impact and so improved in their next group games against Cameroon and defending champions, Tunisia. When they got to the quarter-finals, the opposition expectedly became tougher and with a team like Senegal, five- time champions, who were rugged and strong, the Nigerian men could no longer muster enough strength to stand the ferocious Senegalese who romped to a 16-point victory.

The praise-singer who hailed Kida after the female team triumphed over Mali as the man with the Midas touch has been mute since the D’Tigers crashed out.

He wrote that “Kida came on board in 2017, as the captain of a basketball ship that was submerged in the murky waters of greed, corruption, egoistic and mindless vain glorious pursuits by the previous leadership of the NBBF.”

He forgot that the same previous leadership he called names were in-charge when the same D’Tigers won the Afrobasket two years before the ‘coup’ by Solomon Dalung brought in the so-called Messiah who is now claiming the glory that doesn’t belong to him but God.

The same board that the lackey dubbed corrupt, greedy and egoistic had secured an improved national team sponsorship contract with PEAK of China after NIKE of USA refused to review their contract with the NBBF to at least closer to what they had with Angola.

NIKE didn’t know that the D’Tigers were months away from becoming the new African champions by dumping their more revered Angola in the final.

The same board had equally secured a $12 million five-year sponsorshipdealwith,Kwese,amobilenetworkthatwas making its way into the Nigerian market in 2016. ‎That was after the Kida group allegedly instigated the sponsors of the men’s Premier Basketball League, DStv to withdraw.

Recall that in the first year of the new sponsorship deal with Kwese, the winners of the league got N20 million, higher at the time than what winners of the football league ever earned.

That was when Dalung and the ‘vampires’ who had taken over a faction of the federation used their might to hound the Umar group from using federal government owned stadia to prosecute the league.

After Kwese pulled out, the shenanigans of Dalung, Kida and his group with their hired acolytes from FIBA Africa who fed FIBA World with wrong impressions of the situation in Nigeria led to the total collapse of the men’s Premier League till today.

The praise-singing was intended to prepare grounds for Kida to be sold to the government as the Messiah of Nigeria’s basketball and give him a third term. the same they denied Umar, if the D’Tigers had gone ahead to emerge African Champions like the D’Tigresses.

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