Nigeria’s senior men’s national basketball team D’Tigers’ underwhelming performance at the recently concluded 2025 FIBA AfroBasket qualifiers in Monastir, Tunisia, has come as a huge disappointment to basketball stakeholders in the country.
Following paucity of funds, the 2015 African champions had originally withdrawn from the AfroBasket qualifiers window. However, the Ministry of Sports belatedly intervened in the embarrassing situation for the team to travel to Tunisia on the day of the qualifiers. As a matter of fact, the D’Tigers played their opening match of the qualifiers a few hours after they arrived at the venue of the competition.
Consequently, the former African champions put up dismal performances and lost all three matches in Group B where they were paired along with Cape Verde, Uganda and Uganda and have since crashed out of the race to Paris Olympics and the World Cup. It will be recalled Nigeria’s group opponent Libya shocked Morocco in the decisive Game 2 of the 2025 FIBA AfroBasket Zone 1 Pre-Qualifiers.
For the records, D’Tigers began the qualifiers on a losing note after they fell 89-82 to Libya, 76-62 in their second match against Uganda before their final defeat to the Cape Verdeans who trounced them 78-62.
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The below expectation performance of the team didn’t come as a surprise to most basketball stakeholders in Nigeria who said they saw the disaster looming but there was no one to avert it.
Speaking of their uninspiring display in Tunisia, D’Tigers’ Head Coach Mohammed Abdulrahman in a video posted on X blamed the sporting disaster on poor preparations which he said was due to lack of funding.
“If we get our acts together and have the necessary support in terms of funding and everything and we will prepare much earlier, we are going to be fine,” he said.
“With the same team, if we get the chance to put in some practice sessions, we are still going to be fine. Most of the mistakes we are making we made here at the tournament and we are paying dearly for it.
“If we had some training sessions we would have taken care of those mistakes and it would have been a different ball game.”
Speaking after the first round of qualifiers, Kaduna born Bright Osagie Akhuetie in another post on X said, “Coming out here even without practicing. We have to structure and prepare as a team. Imagine if we stayed together for a month, we would’ve done better.”
Similarly, D’Tigers captain Mike Nuga implored authorities to take cognizance of lessons of the first window ahead of the second stanza in 2025.
“I think the lessons we can take away from the first window is just being more ready,” the Lagos born player said. “I think we have a good group of guys. We had all the pieces to get wins but maybe we could’ve been more prepared mentally.”
Nuga, who finished as the competition’s fourth highest points scorer with 65, admitted the players should also share in the blame for loss of concentration in crucial moments of their games.
“I feel like we could’ve paid more attention to smaller details especially rebounding and just gelling with each other, I think we could’ve done a lot better,” he said.
Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) Vice president, Babs Ogunade, in a chat with Trust Sports said the team performed poorly because they didn’t go to camp and train due to lack of funding.
“You are aware of what happened. The money wasn’t released for us to get the best players for the qualifiers. There was no money to go to camp for the players to train until the last minute,” he said.
He further said the ministry should be blamed for not releasing funds needed by the team.
“You should ask the ministry why the money wasn’t released on time. I don’t work in the ministry,” he stated.
A former D’Tigers captain, Skambo Morrison expressed his displeasure at the team’s shoddy preparation
“An English adage says if you fail to prepare, prepare to fail and this was exactly what happened to our players. They were not even sure of travelling again until that night and had to fly into Tunisia on the day of their game. In fact, their match time was moved forward.
“Psychologically the boys were at a disadvantage already. There was no way they would perform credibly well at that point. It is just sad that the issue of funding comes up every time and we seem to be the only country that experiences this. Every Sports Minister comes and says they are not a minister of football but for all sports, but we don’t see that,” he said.
On his part, a former U-20 national team coach, Emmanuel Odah, blamed the NBBF for the poor performance of the team.
“As a coach, I look at the bright side of things. I won’t blame the coach or the players but the system. The question we should be asking is for how long was the federation aware of the qualifiers? We are so used to the fire-brigade approach.
“Mentally, the players were not prepared for the tournament and you can’t blame them for that. We tend to rush things at the last hour. We don’t have a database and statistics of our players. Bright was with us at Area 10 and next thing he was to play for Nigeria.
“The players have been in the country for some time now so why didn’t they bring them together and let them train if they knew they were going to count on them,” he queried.
Despite the recent setback in Tunisia, D’Tigers still have a chance to qualify for the AfroBasket. In February 2025, there will be one more qualifying window, and the top three teams from each group will constitute the 16 nations that will participate in the FIBA AfroBasket 2025.
