By Victor Okoye
Abuja, April 8, 2022 – Despite the on-going shenanigans within the rank and file of the Nigerian basketball family, Igoche Mark said he was ready to reposition the game with grassroots development being the focal point under his watch as the President of the Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF).
Igoche Mark, the owner of Mark Mentors, has yet again defended his position as the duly elected president of the NBBF, adding nobody pushed him to contest in the first instance.
Mark was elected president of the NBBF in a parallel election reportedly supervised by the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development in Abuja on January 31, while incumbent immediate past President of NBBF Musa Ahmadu-Kida was reportedly re-elected the same day in Benin City with world body FIBA officials in attendance.
“The decay in Nigerian basketball has been alarming in the last four years, that’s why I joined the race for the election and on January 31, I was elected NBBF President in Abuja,” Mark in company of some basketball stakeholders including Ubon Udoh, the chief executive officer of the Abdul Samad Rabiu’s Initiative-Africa Fund for Social Research and Development (ASR Africa) noted.
“Fixing Nigerian basketball is a heavy task, but it’s doable.
“There was only one election that took place and that’s the one that followed the ministry’s guidelines. I don’t know where another (election) came from.
“FIBA is a foreign body; they don’t dictate what happens in Nigeria. The ministry is the custodian of sports in Nigeria and basketball is not an exception.
“What the ministry says is what we will hold in Nigeria. For the past years, we didn’t see FIBA in Nigeria.”
Of course, Nigerian basketball has been bedeviled by one crisis or the other since the 1990s with opposing camps trying to outdo one another in their bid to control the levers of power even with words rife that Mark is being foisted in other to keep the problems unabated.
“For anybody to think that I was planted by some people in this 21st century is wrong and why didn’t they say such before now?” Mark continued. “Nobody pushed me and nobody said I was being pushed when I was investing my resources and time in the development of the game.”
Mark noted that his focus is reposition the sport as he highlighted some of the problems bedevilling the sport.
His words: “We want to focus on grassroots basketball development, we have the talents, but we don’t harness them. If we had eight NBA drafts last time, it means we have the talents. Then why is it not impacting the local scene? That’s the problem and reason we want to focus on the grassroots.
“What is killing the game here is lack of facilities. Playing on hard surfaces isn’t good, it shortens the careers of the players.
“We want to bring back age-grade events and the local leagues; without the local leagues, we can’t progress.
“Ejike Ugboaja was drafted from the local league to the NBA. If we had a sustainable league, only God knows how many players would have made it like Ejike.”
He added: “I know players who were forced to retire from basketball, not because they are old, but because of inactivity in the last five years.
“We have very good players who left to become labourers and casual workers, but they could have gone farther in the game if they were given the opportunity.
“That’s what politics does, so I think it’s time we stop this on-going mess.
“My dream was to play in the NBA, but I couldn’t; I’m here now to help the players achieve their dreams and I’ll be so fulfilled.”
Incidentally, Mark seemed to be enjoying the support of the players who are urging him in the bid to restructure the game across board.
“IG (Igoche) is our President because his dreams are most of our dreams,” Ugboaja, a former national team (D’Tigers) player noted.
“Basketball had long been suffering and I think 100 percent, the players are behind him to reposition the game.
“Some people know basketball, but they don’t like basketball rather they use basketball to make money; yet they don’t want basketball to grow in Nigeria and there are so many of them.
But unlike these ones, IG loves basketball and everywhere there is basketball in Nigeria, you will see him and that is why he is the right person to lead the NBBF at this challenging period.
“With IG, the face of basketball is going to change in Nigeria,” he noted.
Udoh, the owner of Abuja-based HotCold Basketball Club, equally spoke in the same vein, adding that Mark through his many interventions has shown that he has the wherewithal to ensure sustainable growth of basketball in the country.
“The life of IG is all about basketball,” Udoh, a recipient of the President Nana Akufo-Addo Presidential Award of Excellence from the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping and Training Institute, noted.
“Through Mark D’Ball Basketball Championship alone, he has been able to bring back a lot of players playing across Africa because there was no major national domestic championship.
“The most important thing is that we want people who can give opportunities to young kids to feature in the NBA one day because that was what basketball used to be.
“I’m very happy that a lot is already going on and very soon, you’ll all see the direction the NBBF is going under IG,” he noted.
