*says Nigeria can dominate Africa if…,
World’s basketball governing body, FIBA Sports Director Lubomir Kotleba has said that Nigeria has the best potential to lead the rest of Africa in basketball if all the stakeholders could rededicate themselves to the service and development of the game.
Kotleba, a retired veteran FIBA super-referee, arrived Abuja for meetings with the NBBF and Nigerian sports authorities in respect of FIBA’s ‘New Governance structure” New Competition Calendar’ and the ‘National Federations Support and Development’ Initiative, disclosed to basketball stakeholders in Abuja Sunday that Angola had hitherto benefitted from the administrative and infrastuctural advantage it had,noting that is now over with the recent organizational progress and successes recorded by Nigeria.
“Nigeria players are very skillful and also have the best possible basketball bodies . You have enormous potentials, which if properly harnessed, will make you the leading nation in Africa and with what i see today, there is no reason for you to dominate Africa,like Angola did,for the next 20 years”, he said.
“The Angolans told me that they know the potentials of Nigeria in the game but that what has been working for them is the tremendous funding support from government as against the Nigerians,” he disclosed.
He therefore admonished all the sport’s stakeholders to support the current leadership which he described as “strong and focused” in order to put Nigerian basketball where it ought to be on the continent.
The FIBA Sports Director who took time to watch games of the Abuja Elite Private Secondary Schools Basketball Classics at the outdoor courts of the Abuja National Stadium also interacted with various stakeholders of the basketball family to find out how they operate and advised them on how to give their best in their areas of specialization.
Before his departure Tuesday, NBBF president, Tijjani Umar had led Mr. Kotleba on courtesy calls to the Nigeria Olympic Committee (NOC) president, Engr. Habu Gumel, his predecessor and former sports minister, Engr. Sani Ndanusa as well as the Director General of the National Sports Commission, Mallam Al-Hassan Yakmut.
The three administrators thanked him for visiting the NBBF, which they described as the reference point for sports federations in Nigeria and appealed to FIBA to support basketball in Nigeria to enable NBBF sustain the many successes it recorded in
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