Nigeria Content Online

The battle for top
honours at the ongoing Milo Secondary Schools Basketball Championship
will be a straight fight between the Kwara and Delta State
representatives, Sani Turi, coach of Kaduna’s Queen Amina College has
said.

Kwara’s Dalex Royal
College have been impressive so far in the championship and they won in
their first game against Adamawa’s Government Girls Secondary School
with ease.

The same goes for Delta’s Asaba Girls Grammar School who demolished Queen Amina College 44-12.

Judging from what
he has seen of the Kwara and Delta representatives, Turi believes both
sides are a class above other teams taking part in the championship,
although he said he will be satisfied to see his team finish in third
place.

“We will be
definitely be satisfied with the bronze medal because I don’t think
that the young players I brought for this championship can rub
shoulders with the Kwara and Delta teams,” said Turi.

“The two teams are
very strong sides and I think the title will be fiercely competed for
by these teams. For us, we will settle for the bronze medal which we
believe will inspire our young team to aim higher at the next edition
of the tournament.”

Adamawa coach not left out

Just like his
Kaduna counterpart, the Adamawa State coach, Dickson Tinism, also
believes the Kwara and Delta representatives are in a league of their
own. Nonetheless, Tinism looks forward to a tough semi-final clash
after qualifying for the tournament’s last-four after Zamfara’s
Government Girls Secondary School failed to turn up for their match on
Wednesday.

As a result, the
Adamawa team were given the maximum points, which guaranteed them a
place in the last-four – alongside group winners, Kwara’s Dalex Royal
College.

“It is painful that
we could not use the match against Zamfara to tune up for the semi
final clash but with what we had achieved this year, I think we have a
good chance even though we will be facing a tough side in the
semi-final stage,” said Tinism.

Commited sponsors

Nestle Nigeria PLC,
sponsors of the annual championship, reaffirmed its commitment to the
development of basketball. The company promised participants and
spectators an exciting time at the national finals.

Walter Okafor, the Category Business Manager (Beverages) of the
company, said that no expense has been spared to ensure a befitting
national final in the usual Nestle Milo tradition. He expressed delight
at the high standard of play demonstrated by the various teams so far
at the national finals saying that the youngsters have displayed great
skills, discipline, fair play and commitment to the game.

Nigeria’s U-18 male
basketball team, the Junior Tigers, will on Friday start its quest for
a ticket to next year’s World Youth Championships coming up in Latvia
from June 30 to July 10, 2011.

The Nigerian team
is one of the twelve African teams competing at the 17th Afrobasket
competition, which begins tomorrow in Rwanda and runs through October
17.

The championships,
which is also serving as a qualifying event for the world tourney also
has Algeria, Tunisia, Ivory Coast, Mali, Angola, Zimbabwe, Gabon, Congo
Brazzaville, hosts Rwanda and defending champions, Egypt all competing
for the two tickets allocated to the continent.

The nine-day tournament will be jointly staged at Amahoro Indoor stadium and Green Hills academy.

La Palisse
Nyandungu hotel will host six teams, five teams will stay in Lemigo
hotel, while the home team is already settled in at Belvedere village.

Before leaving for
the event yesterday for the tourney, the players alongside the team
handlers said they were ready to make the country proud in Rwanda and
also to secure one of the available ticket.

Emmanuel Odah and
Ogoh Daudu are in charge of the Nigerian team, which had twelve players
making the trip. The draws for the competition will take place later
today with the twelve countries on parade expected to be split into two
groups.

Earlier in the year, The Nigeria female U-19 team secured a ticket
to represent the continent at the World championships in Chile next
year after finishing second in the Afrobasket championship for the
females held in Cairo, Egypt.

The
indefinite suspension placed on Nigeria by football’s world governing
body, FIFA may soon be lifted as the National Association of Nigerian
Footballers (NANF), led by Harrison Jalla, has agreed to an out of
court settlement – regarding the case the association brought against
officials of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).

The association had
sued the elected board of the NFF as well as several top officials
including FIFA executive committee member Amos Adamu to the Federal
High Court in respect of the disputed August 26 elections into the NFF
executive committee.

The action was
however contrary to FIFA regulations and was one of the reasons given
by the world body on Monday for its decision to suspend Nigeria from
international football.

In a communiqué
jointly signed by Jalla, Adamu, former Super Eagles defender Taribo
West and five others, NANF agreed to an out of court settlement so as
to “ensure that Nigeria does not lose any of its FIFA-organised
qualifiers” scheduled for this weekend.

The qualifiers
comprise the African Under 20 Youth Championship qualifier between the
Flying Eagles and their Mauritian counterparts, and the 2012 Africa Cup
of Nations match in Conakry between Nigeria and Guinea.

There are however
certain conditions that need to be in place, in the opinion of NANF,
before the next hearing of the case on October 25 in Lagos. Top of the
conditions is that, all the issues contained in the suit filed by the
association must be resolved amicably between all the parties concerned
before the next court hearing.

Nigeria-Guinea game in doubt

Meanwhile, Guinea’s
national team coach Frenchman Michel Dussuyer has said the game between
the Super Eagles and Guinea, scheduled for Sunday has been postponed.

Speaking on
Wednesday morning to French sports magazine L’Equipe from Abidjan, Cote
D’Ivoire where the Guineans are preparing for the match, Dussuyer said
he got a fax from the Guinean FA saying the Nigeria encounter has been
postponed indefinitely.

“No reasons were given. We’re waiting for further clarifications,” Dussuyer said.

The NFF is however in the dark regarding the development.

According to its
media officer, Robinson Okosun, there has not been any official
communication from either the Guinean FA or the confederation of
African Football (CAF). Okosun said efforts had been made by the NFF to
get in touch with CAF’s media head Suleiman Habuba regarding this
development.

There is however a
possibility that the presidential election run-off in Guinea may have
been the reason behind the Guinean FA’s decision to postpone the game.

The presidential
election run-off now scheduled to take place on October 24, was meant
to take place in September, but was postponed after violent clashes
between rival supporters.

A subsequent date
of October 10 – the day the Nigeria-Guinea match was initially expected
to take place – was proposed but was not agreed upon because of a row
over who should lead the electoral commission.

The electoral commission was plunged into chaos last month when its
president was convicted of electoral fraud during the first round. He
later died after a long illness.

The
ban placed on Nigeria by world football governing body, FIFA, over what
it described as government interference in the affairs of the Nigeria
Football Federation (NFF), may be a blessing after all.

Mary
Onyali-Omagbemi, one of Nigeria’s most accomplished athletes, said this
at a meeting of concerned members of the sports fraternity who met on
Monday to review the state of sports in the country.

“It was what we did
that warranted FIFA to drop the hammer on us. It is one of us that
wrote FIFA that made them come down on us,” Onyali-Omagbemi said.

For her, the ban was not all bad news. She believes there might be a silver lining to it.

“Maybe what has
happened will make us return to the grassroots,” she said. “We must go
back to the grassroots because it is the only way out of this terrible
situation we have found ourselves in. All sports federations in the
country must as a matter of urgency seek to embrace the grassroots
options if we must make any headway.”

Onyali-Omagbemi,
who won medals for Nigeria at the All Africa Games, Commonwealth Games,
and the Olympics during her days as a competitor, said new talents were
not being discovered nationwide. Instead, she said what is happening is
that tired and aging athletes are being recycled.

“We must find a way
out of this mess. We cannot continue like this but first of all we must
accept collective responsibility for what has happened and then chart a
way forward,” she said.

No more negativity

Onyali-Omagbemi said that one of the things to do is to believe in Nigeria.

“We must overcome the tendency to stop being negative about our
country. There are a lot of positives we can take away from Nigeria.
There good people doing great things here and we must always emphasise
that. It is because we keep running ourselves down that bodies like
FIFA always threaten us. It is sad that some people in this country are
writing to organisations like FIFA, IOC etc to drop the hammer on us.
It is very unfortunate,” she said.