The government’s backing football is enjoying to the seeming neglect of other sports in the country has drawn the ire of the head of one of the major sports under the supervision of the National Sports Commission, NSC, Mr. Tijanni Umar.

In his assessment of sports in the just gone 2013 on a Lagos-based radio station, Metro FM , Umar who is the President of the Nigeria Basketball Federation, NBBF, lamented the focus on football by succeeding governments in the last 10 to 20 years and expressed hope the attitude would change this year.

“There has been too much focus on football in the last 10 to 20 years to the detriment of other sports particularly basketball. The successes recorded in football these past years are not encouraging yet money  is continuously being pumped into it.

I am not happy about it at all and other basketball faithful are angry too. We were at the (basketball) Nations Cup which we could have won but for late preparation caused by lack of money. We had a good team but the preparation was poor due to lack of funding,” he disclosed.

Continuing, a visibly angry Umar added, “you see if we must move forward in this country, we must be focused and seen to be planning for our successes. The successes recorded in football were not through any serious planning or technical input but by happenstance hence it took 19 years to win the Nations Cup again.”

The NBBF boss, who also serves as a vice president of the Nigeria Olympic Committee, NOC, said that despite the neglect, “we had to run basketball with our money and peoples’ money. This idea of running from pillar to post anytime we are preparing for a competition must stop. We must start planning well and attention must be given to other sports.”

Even in his anger, Mr. Umar expressed hope that basketball will continue to strive to get more corporate support to drive its programmes, adding that “despite all the troubles, we are still well rated in Africa.”

Despite crashing in the quarter-final at the last Afrobasket Championship in Cote, d’Ivoire, Nigeria’s men’s team is ranked second behind Angola in Africa and 18th in the world while the women’s team are ranked fourth behind Mali, Angola and Senegal and 32nd in the world.