Funds threaten D’Tigers world cup campaign

The senior National Basketball men’s team, D’Tigers’ earlier scheduled trip to China in continuation of their preparation for the FIBA World Cup may have suffered a setback over paucity of funds.

The Nigeria Basketball Federation is said to be struggling to raise funds for the tour.

This was made known to journalists on Saturday by the General Manager of the team, Musa Adamu when asked about the team’s planned trip for the FIBA 2019 World Cup in China.

Nigeria had lined up series of warm up matches in Shanghai, China to further fine tune the team’s preparations. However, Adamu said paucity of funds may cause serious blow to the team’s preparations.

According to him, efforts to secure funds from the Federal Ministry of Sports for the trip has not yielded result.

“I cannot tell you exactly when the team is leaving for China, the basketball federation has been doing a lot for this team.

“We started this elimination over a year ago and now going to two years and the federation has been funding the trips for each window.

“Each window, we had to bring players, fly them down, accommodate them and also pay insurance, and all these things have been done singlehandedly by the federation.

“What we’ve heard are just promises from the ministry to support us, but we are still expecting and hoping that they will do so before we leave for China,” Adamu said.

Adamu, an ex international, said that despite plans to adequately prepare the team for the apex global sports fiesta, the unavailability of funds might just be the clog in the wheel of the team’s preparation.

“The team is here in Nigeria, so we hope that they will act because we don’t know when we will leave. There are no funds available for now.

“The federation is looking up to the Ministry with the hope that the funds will be released for us to leave on time,” he said.

The competition dunks off on Aug. 31, and has Nigeria in Group B with Russia, Argentina and South Korea.