Nigeria’s preparation for the 2023 Afrobasket Women’s Championship, billed to hold in Rwanda from July 28 to August 6, has suffered a huge setback, as players expected to participate in then tryout refused to join the exercise.
According to a source in the U.S. camp, D’Tigress new coach, Rena Wakama, cancelled the second day of tryout, which was supposed to hold from July 8 to 11 in Chicago, U.S., when she could not get enough players for the exercise.
The source said the tryout would now move to Abuja where home-based players and some of their overseas-based counterparts are expected to participate in the screening for players less than 10 days before the Afrobasket Championship.
There are fears that the coach may not have top quality players to choose from following some of the established stars resolve to boycott the exercise, which they described as an insult to the players.
Recently, 2019 Afrobasket champion, Oderah Chidom, announced that she was quitting the team, citing a ‘lack of professionalism’ from the NBBF.
She told ESPN that after the upheaval within Nigerian basketball that led to the withdrawal of the team from the FIBA World Cup, the open tryouts were the last straw for her.
According to Chidom, seeing an Instagram post of open tryouts in three different locations three weeks before Afrobasket was the last straw.
“I will not be attending. I don’t think that’s professional at all. I consider myself a professional. And I don’t think it’s okay for me to pay my way to try out for something when I think I have a resume that speaks for itself.
“I have standards of how I conduct business at the professional level, and Nigeria continues to disappoint me.
“This is a national team. Generally, what you do is you invite a group of professionals and you compete in a camp and then the 12 best at that camp get to compete on whatever team and that’s mostly how a national team is conducted.”
NBBF sources told The Guardian that the federation would help Wakama raise a competitive squad for the championship, saying that some of the challenges will soon be sorted out.
A source, who pleaded anonymity, said NBBF President, Musa Kida, was in touch with some of the top players and would arrange to have them in camp for some days of preparation before the championship.
He said the players were being expected in Lagos and Abuja for the Nigeria leg of the tryout this week.
The exercise was earlier scheduled to hold on July 8 and 9 in Lagos and on July 10 and 11 in Abuja.
