The Holy Bible tells us in chapter one of the Book of Genesis how God created the heaven and the earth. Reading through the verses of that first chapter up to verse three of chapter two when the creation ended and God rested, you will see that God followed an order and procedure.

That is how everything under the sun should be, otherwise there would be chaos in the world. Any time people tried to do things without order, there is always confusion and most times no good result comes out of such efforts.

Everybody that is a stakeholder in basketball in Nigeria knows that the Nigeria Basketball Federation, NBBF is the governing body of the sport in Nigeria. And so any basketball event, more so a league, must be sanctioned by it, otherwise it will not be recognised. That is the situation with all other sports.

So it was very funny when out of the blues, a new basketball league named Africa Basketball League was announced to commence this year. Surprised that I was not told, being the head of the NBBF media, I put a call to the leadership of the federation and I was told the league cannot take off if the organisers don’t get clearance from the federation.

Ordinarily any effort aimed at improving the lot of the game and its practitioners is a welcome development and no one, not even the NBBF would want to kill such an idea. However, when things are done to undermine the authority of the federation, because some people don’t like the faces of the people who administer the sport, then every move must be made for the right thing to be done to save the game.

Those behind the African Basketball League, having read the hand writing on the wall and saw the futility of what they were going into, crawled back to the NBBF where they were told the right thing to do, that is getting the approval of the continental body, FIBA Africa, since they wanted other countries outside Nigeria to participate.

So to FIBA Africa they proceeded but before the meeting with FIBA Africa could hold and approval granted, the ABL organisers have gone ahead to announce a commencement date, drawn their fixtures and even named their cable television partners. As all these happened, the NBBF kept mute and watched.

Like in heaven where there is order, FIBA Africa after meeting with the ABL group mid February in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire came out with resolutions and advise not different from what the NBBF had earlier told them when they met the leadership.

FIBA Africa saw the ABL project as very interesting but said it expected the organisers to submit “an explanatory technical documentation of the project and its implementation. These elements will enable a better understanding of the subject.”

It also told the ABL  organisers that the “proposed competition cannot bear the denomination   “Africa” or any other term referring to a continental competition without the approval and technical supervision of FIBA  Africa.

This FIBA Africa said is to enable it and ABL define a formal framework for the realization of such a project to, among other things, avoid conflicts with the National Federations, in this case, the NBBF.

FIBA Africa also stated “the impossibility (of having) a Continental Competition with only 6 teams which selection remains subjective according to the proposed formula. The current FIBA Africa Clubs Championship is for countries’ Club reigning Champions” and that the  “composition of the participating teams (in the proposed ABL) must comply with the regulations of  the (NBBF) to enable them to participate in both competitions (National Championships and African Championships).

The continental body made one point clear though, that is its “non-opposition to such a project that would better promote the current competition of clubs”.

When the ABL organisers pleaded to be allowed to organize the competition this year as a test run because of the “significant funds invested”, FIBA Africa as a way of soft landing for them, proposed the following alternatives:

That is either changing the competition’s denomination and withdrawing “Africa” from it and make the event a private or regional one, committing only the concerned or participating National Federations. Or postponing the start of the competition so that both parties (FIBA africa and A.B.L) could consult to finalize the competition’s related technical aspects. Despite this advise, ABL went ahead to commence the programme but I don’t know under what name. The last is yet to be heard on this action.

The lesson from this is that people or organisations should not undermine constituted authorities or take laws into their hands. When ever people put the cart before the horse, the result is always unpalatable because without the horse, the cart is grounded. The horse pulls the cart and not the other way round.

On a final note, heard that the Minister of Youth and Sports, Barrister Solomon Dalung led a ‘strong’ delegation, don’t know how many they were, to Brazil to inspect facilities which our athletes will compete with during the Olympics. I don’t know if they took the athletes’ coaches whose responsibility it is to instruct the athletes. If there were no coaches, I dare say that the trip was a mere jamboree. We should be preparing our athletes instead because what Brazil will present is not different from what our athletes are already used to. Am I making any sense fellow Nigerians?