The Nigeria national basketball team, D’Tigers, has announced its withdrawal from the AfroBasket Qualifiers over refusal of the government to release fund to them.
This means the D’tigers will not take part in the 2025 FIBA AfroBasket championship following the decision to opt out of the qualifiers.
“Despite several 2020 Olympians committing, D’Tigers will forfeit this AfroBasket Qualifiers window due to lack of funds from government,” the official X account of the D’Tigers posted on Wednesday.
The 2015 champions are billed to participate in the qualifying tournament scheduled for Tunisia in the next two days.
They are drawn in Group B of the 2025 AfroBasket qualifiers alongside Cape Verde, Libya and Uganda.
Unfortunately, Nigeria will not participate in the qualifiers with the flight tickets for team members yet to be booked due to lack of funds as at the time of filing this report, thereby forfeiting their participation in the main tournament next year.
This is not the first time that lack of funds has threatened the D’Tigers’ participation in a major basketball tournament.
In 2019, the team nearly missed out on featuring in the 2019 FIBA World Cup until a late intervention by Muhammadu Buhari-led government.
Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether Mr Tinubu’s government will come up with a late intervention to salvage the situation and allow the team to participate in qualifiers in the face of economic crisis raging the whole country as the naira continues to free fall
