By: Chinedum Ohanusi
The recent calls for a tenure elongation in favour of the out-going President of the Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF), has ran into an astute brick-wall, and rebuffed as chants by persons who are completely alien to Nigerian basketball, and has the least inkling as to the facts and figures of the course they are recruited to propagate.
A major stakeholder in the NBBF Congress, and Chairman of the Taraba State Basketball Association, Danjuma Goyo stated this while reacting to one of such recent articles, written by a Blogger, Coach Uni Dan Kwaki, and circulated on various Social Media platforms.
In his article, Coach Dan Kwaki made a case for incumbent NBBF President, Engr. Musa Ahmadu Kida to be returned to office, in the upcoming federations polls, for an unprecedented third term, having already served two terms of four years each.
He went on to list five
reasons, to justify his call. But Goyo deflated his postulations, by observing that Coach Kwaki is completely oblivious of the facts of the matter, and will do well to restrict himself to happenings in his comfort zone – football.
“Only stakeholders (active and retired) in basketball, I mean the players, coaches, administrators can give valid assessments of this board, which has been an aberration in the last eight years, and has been utterly clandestine in its dealings and operations”.
Goyo made reference to the recent Board meeting, where the NBBF gave themselves pass marks in a Communique, and projected that they will in 2025 carry out programmes, like the organization of a regular men’s and women’s premier leagues; that’s after years of abridged championships; and described both the meeting and the communique pushed out as “misleading fallacies”.
“A Board meeting that was held, despite not having a quorum formed is laughable. As we speak, no state in Nigeria has received a dossier of the programmes and activities, the board said it wants to execute in 2025; and has been touting the same in both social and traditional media platforms”.
In another twist, Goyo while describing Coach Kwaki as a mercenary, said those that hired him to push out the cooked up write-up, did so out of desperation; after failing to find any such person, within the slam and dunk family, to do their inordinate biddings.
Goyo therefore joined other well-meaning basketball stakeholders, in urging Nigerians, especially the leadership of the National Sports Commission (NSC) to exercise caution, while reading the works of praise singers, Engr Kida and his 3rd term seeking board, have hired to canvass support for their unprecedented ambition, by leveraging on a few of the achievements that occured in the past eight years, as if they are completely new.
In a sharp reaction to all of these, the 1st Vice President of the NBBF, Mr. Babs Ogunade has issued a statement, that seems to downplay reports that the outgoing board is hatching plans to return Engr Kida to office, as President for the third term.
Speaking to journalists in Lagos, Mr. Ogunade insisted that the sudden burst of energy and programmes reeled out by the Federation, in recent weeks are all geared towards “ensuring that the board serves out the remaining few weeks of its [inglorious] tenure strongly”.
However, the unanswered question in all of these is, why is the Vice-President denying the rumoured third term ambition on behalf of the President; and why is the out-going President not able to clear the air by himself, being that a meeting of the body, which he presided over, was held recently.
There are also reports that the said constitutional amendment, which former Sports Minister, Chief Sunday Akin Dare had asked the NBBF Board to perfect, with a view to unifying basketball stakeholders in the country, was shrouded in secrecy, and the document transmitted to FIBA, the global governing body of the basketball; has a 3rd term clause in it.
