Nigeria\u2019s decision to withdraw the country from international competition for two years as announced Thursday by the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development is sure to attract sanctions and a ban for no less than five years.
\nThis is according to information reaching the Tidesports source from the FIBA Africa Secretariat in Abidjan.
\nTidesports source gathered that a letter from the Sports Ministry signed by Olabisi Afolabi informing FIBA about Nigeria\u2019s decision to withdraw from basketball activities for two years had reached the Secretariat.
\nOur source hinted that the FIBA Executive will meet to deliberate on the matter and before a decision is reached.
\n\u201cNigeria did not exhaust all available options available to it before taking a decision on to withdraw for two years. The implications will not be in the interest of Nigeria unless the decision is reversed and I sincerely hope they would,\u201d our source stated.
\nOn Friday, Upe Atosu described as heart wrenching the decision of Nigeria suspending basketball for two years. The decision means that Nigeria men\u2019s team due to play in the third window of the FIBA World Cup African qualifiers in July as well as the women\u2019s team will miss September\u2019s Women\u2019s World Cup in Australia.
\nA letter from the ministry said the withdrawal was because of \u201cthe unending drama that have plagued and nearly crippled basketball in Nigeria.
\n\u201cThis will enable Nigeria to revamp the sports from the grassroots as well as domestic leagues which have become moribund.
\n\u201cThe Nigerian Basketball Federation (NBBF) is to be dissolved and an interim committee appointed to oversee the management of the game in the country.\u201d the letter added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nigeria\u2019s decision to withdraw the country from international competition for two years as announced Thursday by the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development is sure to attract sanctions and a ban for no less than five years. This is according to information reaching the Tidesports source from the FIBA Africa Secretariat in Abidjan. Tidesports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=294783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294790,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294783\/revisions\/294790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=294783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=294783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=294783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}