Vice president of the Nigeria Basketball Federation, Babs Ogunade has given his initial reactions to the performance of the D’Tigers at the ongoing AfroBasket qualifiers.

A D’Tigers contingent that had only 9 players traveled for the qualifiers in unpredictable circumstances, NBBF having initially declared that they would forfeit due to a lack of funding.

The team have now traveled to Tunisia and have played three games in the series, and are yet to get a win. Nigeria lost to Uganda, Libya and Cape Verde, leaving the nation in quite a tough spot.

Ogunade in a chat with BRL stated that the situation surrounding the team’s departure was not an excuse to the poor performance.

“We didn’t do as we should have. And as you said, it’s a zero and three. But everybody is aware of what transpired before we managed to go to Tunisia.

“While not on making excuse for how we performed. Yes, there are many other windows.”

“But going there to be part of the participant gives us a fighting chance to qualify for the AfroBasket, and I think for the World Cup. First things first, it’s Afrobasket, then we can take it from there.”

“We have the opportunity of qualifying through the other windows. If we hadn’t taken part in this one, it will leave us on a window, you don’t even have a chance like this; you can’t even compete anymore. But you don’t have a fighting chance of qualifying at all.

But because we are participating in this, we have a fighting chance. What we need to do is to strengthen our dream going forward. I mean, I’d be more prepared going forward.”