The D’Tigers, Nigeria’s national basketball team, will not compete in the 2025 FIBA AfroBasket championship after withdrawing from the qualifiers due to a lack of government funding.
“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, who were drawn in Group B of the 2025 AfroBasket qualifications alongside Cape Verde, Libya, and Uganda, will compete in Tunisia’s qualifying tournament in the coming days.
Unfortunately, Nigeria will not compete in the qualifications because airplane tickets for squad members have yet to be booked due to a lack of cash as of the time of submitting this report, forfeiting their participation in the main competition the following year.
It is not the first time that a lack of cash has jeopardised the D’Tigers’ participation in a big basketball competition. In 2019, the squad almost lost out on the 2019 FIBA World Cup due to a late intervention by Muhammadu Buhari’s government.
D’Tigers’ fate is radically different from that of Nigeria’s national football team, the Super Eagles, who just competed in the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations after president Bola Tinubu granted 12 billion naira for the team.
Meanwhile, it is unclear whether Mr Tinubu’s government will devise a late intervention plan to allow the team to compete in qualifiers under the country’s economic crisis, as the naira continues to collapse.