The protrated leadership crisis rocking the Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) has no end in sight yet as some concerned stakeholders under the aegis of ‘New Face of Basketball’ have rejected imposition of Engr Musa Kida as president of the Federation 42-day after his inauguration by the minister of youth and sports development, Chief Sunday Dare.
Recall that 10 months after two factional presidents (Igoche Mark and Musa Kida) emerged from two congresses held at two different venues Abuja and Benin City, Sports Minister Sunday Dare on Thursday, October 7, 2022 inaugurated Kida-led faction as the authentic board of NBBF and charged it’s the leadership reconciled the warring faction.
But, briefing media in Abuja on Thursday, New Face of Basketball, the group who believed in Igoche Mark’s presidency of NBBF, described the Minister’s action in recognising Kida as NBBF president as illogical, unreasonable and miscarriage of justice.
The group questioned the methodology used by the Sports Minister to hand-pick Kida after publicly acknowledging that two elections took place on January 31, 2022 and declared that the government will not recognize any of the faction, and even went ahead to constitute an Interim Management Committee (IMC) to oversee Nigeria’s basketball.
Spokesman of the group and chairman of Kaduna State Basketball Association, Pastor Scambo Morrision, said the group had maintained silence for the sake of peaceful resolution and amendment to the controversial Constitution of the NBBF.
He said they will continue to push until justice is served but if the Sports Ministry under the leadership of Sunday Dare refused to retrace their steps and do the right thing, they will take the next legitimate option.
“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 elections. Instead, we now found out that there were a 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,” Pastor Morrison declared.
“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.
“What we want is fair and credible elections to be conducted in Nigeria basketball. We also want the constitution of the Nigeria Basketball Federation to be looked into and amended according to the wishes of Nigerians. This piece of document that was written by one man, checked by one man, endorsed by one man and given to one man, cannot stand and we say no to it.
We’ll keep pushing and if they don’t listen to us this time round, we’ll unveil our next line of actions because we are not ready to hold our arms and allow basketball to die.”
