NIGERIA : NBBF Holds Talks On Airing Basketball

Ismaila Umaru Lere

The Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) is exploring the possibility of showing its Premier League matches on television.

Babs Ogunade, NBBF Coor-dinator for the West and Eastern Conference, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the federation was holding talks with some television organisations.
Ogunade said talks were going on with ITV, DSTV and Multichoice.
Players had complained that their matches were not being covered by television stations.
The players said they needed video clips of their games to present to scouts for verification of their performance.
They argue that if the matches were recorded, coaches and players would be able to detect and correct their errors.
Union Bank's Michael Ohiero said video clips of their games would enable clubs to decide whether the players met their requirement.
"You show them at least three video recordings of games you have played and leave them to judge you on that," he said.
William Nboum, also of Union Bank called on the NBBF to cooperate with a notable televi-sion company to record the league matches.
"We expect the NBBF to have had a contractual agree-ment with any of the known TV stations to air all of the games to be played.
Christopher Okoh said televi-sion coverage would assist coa-ches in making the right tech-nical decisions for future games.
"With a video film of the previous game, coaches can know the mistakes of the players and plan for the next game," Okoh said.
Olugboyega Vidal, Union Bank assistant coach, said television coverage would enhance the standard of basketball in the country.
Meanwhile, Customs team defeated Tapgun Rockets of Jos 64-57 in a game played Tuesday night in the city of Jos, Plateau State.
The result means that the Customs are now 1-1 on the road having lost the Monday game to Niger Potters in Minna.
They are on their Road Trip games through the Savannah Conference.
"It was a good game and officiating was good this time. It was quite an open challenge but we got it alright," Abba Mohammed, the assistant coach of the Customs told FIBA online from the highland city.
Experts expected the Cus-toms to take the match against Tapgun made of mainly stu-dents of higher institutions around the city.
The Tapgun boys have cam-paigned consistently in the system for about the past eight years but they have never mea-sured up to being a champion-ship side.

The real test for the Customs in the mountain and rocks city will be the second match in that hall on Wednesday against the Plateau Peaks.
Tapgun Rockets used to serve as one of the feeder sides to the Peaks before they matured into the Premier League system.