Nigeria’s basketball team set to receive lucrative reward after victory
The winning members of Nigeria’s national female basketball team are set to receive a reward of $100,000 each following their triumph at the Fiba Women’s AfroBasket Championship, BBC News reported on August 5th.
Vice-President Kashim Shettima also promised each player a three-bedroom flat, after the team, also known as D’Tigress, defeated Mali 78-64 in Ivory Coast to win their seventh AfroBasket title.
These promises follow swiftly after the Nigerian national football team won the Women’s African Cup of Nations, with the President of Nigeria, Bola Tinubu, vowing a similar bonus to be paid for their success.
“Nigerian women have never failed this nation in sports. From the Super Falcons standing tall on the world stage, to our athletes breaking records on the track, and D’Tigress building a basketball dynasty, our women have consistently made us proud”, Tinubu said in a statement.
These sporting successes have occurred amidst a sporting boom in North and West Africa, particularly in women’s sport, which has typically been left behind. However, that is slowly shifting thanks to increasing grassroots investment, exposure, and prize money for elite competitions increasing significantly.
Sport as a broader sector has seen huge swathes of investment in North Africa thanks to Morocco boosting infrastructure ahead of co-hosting the 2030 FIFA World Cup, and the international governing body FIFA expanding talent identification and development programmes in the region for male and female prospects.
However, despite the positivity that this investment and development have generated, the promises of cash prizes from the Nigerian government are still perceived as untrustworthy.
Some feel it is unsustainable given the economic fragility the country has, with the reliance on aid proving troublesome given the inevitable cuts that are imminent.
These promises have also been made before.
It was only two months ago that the Nigerian government fulfilled its 31-year-old pledge to award houses to the 1994 Super Eagles football squad after they won the Africa Cup of Nations in Tunisia.
Some members of that team, including then-captain Stephen Keshi, died before receiving the promised award.
Nonetheless, the continuous sporting achievements of the Nigerian women alongside the development and ambition seen in North African nations mean those promises will not affect the upward trajectory of sport in the region.
BBC News, Maghrebi.org
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