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The Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF) congress held in Yola, Adamawa State, has ended with a communique setting October 15 as the date for elections in Abuja, but the outcomes of the meeting are generating questions among stakeholders over the composition of delegates, the manner of financial reports approvals, and the process used to constitute the electoral committee.
The NBBF in it’s communique said 39 of its 44 delegates were in attendance at the congress. However, reports that the Osun and Kwara States chairmen were barred from participating have raised concerns about who determined the final delegate list and on what grounds.
Reacting to the development, basketbal Coach I.O Wilson MPhil questioned the credibility of the attendance figures. “You cannot claim unity while controlling the attendance list,” he said, adding that if dissenting voices were deliberately excluded, “this is not consensus, it is selection.”
A separate and more fundamental objection came from Coach Ayo Bakare, who disputed the total delegate figure itself. According to Bakare, the NBBF Congress is constitutionally made up of 50 members, not 44, a fact he said is clearly stated in the section of the NBBF Constitution listing Congress membership. He noted that this discrepancy was raised on the floor of the congress during proceedings in Yola, making its reappearance in the communique difficult to explain away as oversight.
“To see that figure show up again in the communique, makes one wonder why the wrong figures are being deliberately projected,” Bakare said. He argued the motive was optical: a favourable vote expressed as a percentage of 44 “sounds a lot more impressive” than the same vote calculated against the constitutionally correct figure of 50. Bakare suggested repetition of the smaller number was designed to normalise it as fact despite the constitutional record and the floor correction, and described those left out of the count as “the section that are proving difficult to manhandle into submission.”
The congress approved financial reports covering 2024, 2025 and 2026 — the communique listing the final year as “2926,” a typographical error that has drawn attention to the document’s preparation.
Coach Wilson described the approval process as rushed and lacking accountability. “Three years of finances approved in one sitting with no published breakdown to stakeholders — that is not transparency, that is rubber-stamping,” he said.
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The congress constituted a seven-man electoral committee and a three-man appeals committee to superintend the October polls. Questions have emerged over who nominated members of both committees, given that the congress which set them up is itself the subject of the delegate-list dispute.
Coach Wilson was blunt in his assessment: “Who constituted the committees? The same congress whose composition is disputed. That means the referee is chosen by one team.” He also noted the absence of any stated external monitoring, pointing out there was “no independent oversight, no NSC or FIBA observer mentioned.”
NBBF President Musa Kida used the congress to deny seeking a third term in office, stating he has “never been part of subverting the NBBF approved constitution” in that regard.
Coach Wilson questioned the timing of the denial. “Why deny what nobody officially accused in the communique? That is pre-emptive defense,” he said, adding that it “contradicts the suspicion on the ground” if the process was genuinely open.
The communique made no reference to league development, grassroots basketball, coaching, infrastructure, 3×3 basketball or high-performance programmes. Its contents were centred on electoral timelines and process, with the congress opening with commendations for President Bola Tinubu, the Adamawa State Governor, and the National Sports Commission leadership for their support.
Summing up his reading of the communique, Coach Wilson said it was “100% about process control: who votes, when, and who counts the votes” rather than the development of the sport. “It is 2017 recycled in Yola,” he added.
With the technical and players’ representatives congress scheduled for October 7–14 in Abuja ahead of the October 15 elective congress, and with the correct size of Congress itself now in dispute, attention will now turn to whether these questions over delegate eligibility, financial disclosure and committee formation are addressed before voting begins.
