NBBF Plans National Women Open Basketball Championship

The Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) is planning a National Women Open Championship to ensure that female clubs in the country participated at least in one competition in the year.

NBBF President, Tijani Umar who disclosed this to the Tidesports Lagos also said that the body would equally introduce a U-16 Championships.

Lumar said that the clubs that participated in 7th Zenith Bank Female Basketball league concluded on Oct. 29 in Lagos had agreed that the competitions begin early in 2012 during their meeting.

The women open championship is designed to expand the number of clubs that will be taking part in the national female league.

“It is to give opportunity to feeder clubs to be promoted to annual female league, thereby engendering serious competition among clubs.

This national championship would have started this year but because of financial constraints, we have all agreed that it takes off next year because it will help to hasten development of the game,” Umar said.

On the U-16 championships, he said that it was basically a talent hunt programme designed to discover players who would be nurtured to take over from the national U-18 teams and progress from there.

He explained that the current male and female U-18 teams had not been performing to expectation at international championships hence, the need to start early to groom players.

This competition will be for secondary schools across the country. This will also help the federation to be sure of the ages of the players since they are in schools,” Umar said.

He appealed to corporate organisations to lift the youth by sponsoring the competitions

The NBBF president also told Tidesports that the Men’s National Division One League had been fixed to take place in Abuja from November 13 to November 20.

This division one league will help to select teams to replace the relegated ones at the end of 2010/2011 DSTV Premier League,” he said.

Delta Force from the Atlantic Conference and Plateau Rocks form the Savannah Conference were relegated after the competition in July.