Some Basketball Stakeholders have called on basketball governing body, FIBA, Ministry of Youths and Sports Development and other key stakeholders to come together and draft a new credible constitution for the federation for the game to grow in the country.
Briefing the media, Thursday, in Abuja, the Spokeperson of the group and Kaduna state Basketball Association chairman, Pastor Scambo Morrisson, disclosed that the present constitution is not ‘workable’ and was singlehandedly written and approved by a one person.
The stakeholders while demanding for genuine reconciliation approach wondered why Kida who is part of a faction in the Nigeria basketball will be the one to be given the responsibility to spearhead any meaningful reconciliation move.
“There must be amendment to the constitution of NBBF. There are certain clauses that must be removed if we desire to move basketball forward in the country. There was input which we submitted to FIBA, the ministry of sports and others but sadly it was not implemented,” Pastor Skambo said.
The group under the umbrella “New Face of Basketball” questioned the methodology used by the Sports Minister, Mr.Sunday Dare, to pick Engr. Kida as the NBBF President after publicly acknowledging that two elections took place on January, 2023 in Benin and Abuja describing the action as “illogical, irrational, unreasonable and miscarriage of justice.
“So, it is not news that the minister of Youth and Sports indeed acknowledged that there were two elections. But our big surprise till today is that the minister and ministry never came out to talk to us about the findings of those elections. As good citizens of this country, we have remained very quiet, calm and disciplined waiting to hear the outcome of those elections.
“But till this day, nobody has called this particular faction to say anything to them concerning the election. Instead, we now found out that there were couple of people parading themselves as the ‘custodians of basketball in Nigeria. We want the minister to know that we have options if he fails to do the right thing.”
“We therefore want a clarification of how Kida emerged to become the president of the NBBF, knowing well that the minister who is in charge of sports in Nigeria acknowledged and pronounced that there were two elections and that his ministry was looking into the issue to make sure that things were resolved in the NBBF,” he said.
He lambasted the treatment meted out to the D’Tigress by the federation and ministry for saying the obvious.
“What is happening to the D’Tigress ? What kind of punishment is being meted out to them?” he queried.
Others basketball stakeholders also spoke in the same vein.
