By Patrick Omorodion

I was not a literature student in my school days and so never seriously read any of Professor Chinua Achebe’s novels.

However, his award winning novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ made a lot of sense to me. Another book of his which is relevant in my piece for today is ‘No Longer At Ease’.

However, I will like to change the title of the novel ‘Things Fall Apart’ to ‘Impostors Fall Apart’ in my narration of the ongoing commotion in the house of the once peaceful and focused Nigeria Basketball Federation, the NBBF.

The NBBF in 2009 elected a board with Tijjani Umar, a focused strategist as the head. He set out to reposition the Federation by plugging loopholes that kind of hindered the progress of the sport and its key stakeholders, the players.

But one man who has always been the cog in the Federation’s wheel of progress, a retired Army Colonel, Samuel Ahmedu started a war with him, like he did to two others before him, U.K. Umar, a top officer with the Nigeria Immigration Service and Gyang Buba, he too a retired top Nigeria Customs Service official. Buba is now a traditional ruler in his Plateau State, the Gbom Gwom Jos.

Ahmedu or Col Sam, as he is fondly called, has the belief that basketball in Nigeria cannot be properly run without his involvement at top levels on the Board. As a result he always fights to be appointed, nominated or elected, which ever comes readily, as an executive member of the Board.

He however, saw Tijjani Umar as his rival who shouldn’t be president before him. After losing out to Umar in 2009, he was desperate to make it into the Board in 2013 but failed again.

And that was how the plot to destabilize the Federation started. And he found a willing tool in Musa Kida whom he wanted to plant as president in 2013 when he, Ahmedu couldn’t get on the Board.

He believed that Kida, a top executive of an oil company back then had the means and so needed some accomplices in the sports military to see his plan through.

So the arrival of Solomon Dalung as the sports minister in 2015 provided him the arsenal to destabilize the NBBF and impose Kida as president in 2017 against the wishes of majority of the stakeholders.

I don’t want to start recalling the battle major stakeholders fought to reclaim the Federation from Col Sam who worked in cahoot with a FIBA Africa official in Abidjan, Alphonse Bile to cajole Dalung.

Yes, Kida realized his life ambition but didn’t bargain for what he started seeing. Because he was still in active service with the oil company he worked with, he gave Ahmedu, his benefactor, powers as head of the Technical Committee to run the Federation almost single handedly during their first term.

The Benue-born military officer who now saw himself as the defacto president, sidelined all other members of the gang who snatched the authority to run the NBBF from the Tijjani Umar group.

The infighting among the impostors later snowballed into some ugly situations like the protest by members of the female national team, the D’Tigress over issues bordering on unpaid allowances and a threat to boycott major competitions.

Kida eventually retired from his job and kind of had time to face his duties as president of the NBBF in his second term despite the attempt of key stakeholders to wrestle the Federation from him. I don’t know what he saw that made him start having issues with his co-conspirator.

At the moment the three musketeers running the NBBF, Musa Kida, Babs Ogunade, the Vice President and Sam Ahmedu have fallen apart. Kida and Ogunade have teamed up to fight their once most trusted ally who knows all and does no wrong.

Ahmedu taunted Ogunade in a recent brickbat saying that he knows nothing about technical matters even as the current chairman of the technical committee as they argued over the procedure adopted in appointing a new coach for the D’Tigress. Ahmedu had accused Ogunade of appointing the coach all by himself.

Ogunade replying told Ahmedu that “I don’t know what makes you think you must be consulted before anything happens on the Board of the NBBF”.

As their battle rages, Kida who has lost the confidence of directors in the sports ministry as his main backer, Sunday Dare, the former sports minister is no longer in-charge and he is finding it difficult to run to the affairs of the Federation citing lack of funds.

The male U-16 team as a result couldn’t attend a competition they qualified for recently.  And another member of the conspiring gang, Musa Adamu admitting to the setback, affirmed that “unfortunately we (NBBF) have to withdraw our participation in the finals as the response we were looking forward to from the ministry was negative”.

But Kida, hitherto, made Nigerians believe that he was the one spending his personal money to run the NBBF and sponsor the national teams.

The confusion has continued as one of the three camps called to select players for the D’Tigress’ Afrobasket championship in Rwanda from July 28 to August 6 was called off in the United States. It was gathered that players invited shunned the camp.

I don’t know why it took other members of the conspiring gang so long to understand that Col Ahmedu was not whom they thought he was. His modus operandi is using ignorant people to achieve his aim of being in-charge all the time. Anyone who stands in his way is an enemy and must be ‘crushed’. And Ogunade, a fellow impostor, is now his new target. 

Those who supported him to pull down the Tijjani Umar Board, including some sports journalists are now too shocked to comment on the the fight for the soul of Nigeria’s basketball as the ‘thieves’ who stole the peace of Nigerian basketball have fallen apart.