Reigning African basketball champions, D’Tigress of Nigeria, are worried about their ability to successfully defend their title in Abidjan when the 2025 Afrobasket takes the tip-off on July 25.

It was learnt yesterday that the National Sports Commission (NSC) has started to buy flight tickets for the players called to camp on Wednesday, July 16. “These tickets that were purchased on Wednesday are coming more than one month behind schedule,” an informed source said yesterday, stressing that the NSC officials were meant to have delivered the ticket to the players in May.

By the programme of the Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) as approved by the NSC, the players were meant to have received their flight tickets to Abuja for the national camp latest in June. 

Another to Basketball source revealed that all the players who are largely based in the US and Europe were rerouted to Abuja after the NSC rejected the federation’s old pattern of running one camp in the USA before the final team list is drawn up. Nearly all the players listed for the 2025 Afrobasket are based abroad.

“When the NSC insisted that every stage of the camping be held in Nigeria, the NBBF rolled out the plan for camping, including an international tournament in Abuja, which was meant to be the last stage before the final list of players is drawn up,” a marketer for the NBBF said in Abuja on Wednesday.

“We are deeply involved with organizing the tournament, but marketing it became very difficult as the days went by, chiefly because the players were not in the country. Nobody was sure of anything. It would have been an easy sell-out to the Abuja community if D’Tigress were in town by June as planned. This is not good for the country.”

Some of the players were expected on Thursday in Abuja after they got tickets to the camp. It is not exactly certain how many of the players can be in town for the Homecoming Tournament, originally set to begin in Abuja on Saturday, 19th, and wrap up on Monday. Togo and Kenya are still expected to play against the African champions.

The Homing Coming tournament was designed to be a huge morale round off to the camping, but it has now become the start of their camping and perhaps the only meaningful session the team can have before they board the flight to Abidjan. But even as they prepare to enter the African championship with little or no training, no clear itinerary has been built for the Afrobasket, as the tickets have not been purchased.

The NSC officials said last week the challenge rested largely on flight availability as they had not been able to secure enough seats for the team.

But an official of the NBBF insisted that what brought this issue of delay in buying tickets for the D’Tigress stems from the refusal of NBBF President, Musa Kida to continue to spend his hard earned cash to fund the teams without assurances of getting refund from the NSC whose duty it is to bankroll the team to the tournament.

“There are just a few west coast flights and we have not been able to get a single flight that can accommodate the entire delegation,” one official said.

He attributed the 

“D’Tigress would not have been involved in this chaotic travel arrangement if NBBF President, Musa Kida, was still funding the trips personally.” 

Checks at NSC indicate that Kida who is now the NNPCL board Chairman is still being owed hundreds of millions of Naira arising from personal funding of some competitions in the past years. 

The continuous change of Ministers and Director Generals at the sports ministry has not helped the matter of him getting refund for similar trips of national basketball teams.

The 2025 AfroBasket is a part of the 2026 FIBA World Cup qualifying event. The NSC handles the World Cup and Olympic qualifiers.