Basketball: Nigeria Can’t Qualify For Olympics —Ahmedu

Proprietor of the Dodan Warriors Basketball Club of Lagos, Col. Sam Ahmedu (retd) believes that it will be hard for Nigeria to play in the basketball event of the London 2012 Olympics.

According to Ahmedu, the current handler of the country’s senior male team, D’Tigers, coach Ayo Bakare lacks the technical ability to qualify the team in the pre-Olympic qualifiers, which parade countries such as Russia, Lithuania, Greece and a host of others next year.

The former board member of Nigeria Basketball Federation, NBBF, who has not hidden his displeasure over how the sport is being run in the country, said that with the calibre of countries that will be contesting for the three available slots for the Olympics in the qualifiers, it would be very hard for Nigeria to scale the hurdles.

“We don’t have to deceive ourselves, we will not qualify for the Olympics as we have missed the chance of qualifying for the Games in Madagascar at the Afrobasket. Winning the championship in Senegal would have been the best way for us to secure our qualification for London 2012, but our team failed us and lost the ticket to Tunisia.“Now, it will be a herculean task for us to qualify as the competition has become stiffer with the likes of Russia, Greece, Lithuania, Puerto Rico, Angola and others from the Asian continent jostling for the three tickets available for grabs in a yet to be decided venue,” he said.

Ahmedu stated further that it is high time the NBBF appointed good coaches for D’Tigers to stop the dwindling fortunes of the team on the African continent.

“As long as the NBBF keeps on appointing those that have little or outdated knowledge of the game to handle our national teams, we will continue to experience this failure at major tourneys.

“There is need to allow competent coaches to take charge in order to return us to the right place in Africa and at the world stage,” he said.

—Bamidele Olowosagba