President of the Nigerian Basketball Federation (NBBF), Musa Kida and the D’Tigress Captain, Aisha Mohammed on Wednesday promised a better outing at the 2018 World Women Basketball Championship in Spain.
Both gave the assurance shortly after President Muhammadu Buhari received the D’Tigresses’ players and officials and awarded each player N1 million and N500,000 to each official.
They expressed gratitude to the President and the country for the support and promised to do the nation proud in subsequent competitions.
“For them, the honour has been to represent Nigeria, to wear the jersey representing 180 million Nigerians.
“And that was what got them moving, that was what motivated them to win the cup.
“For us that is still going to be it.
“We will go to Spain with the same type of motivation that we have with the pride that we have in our country and the belief that we have in ourselves and bring back good results from Spain.’’
Kida acknowledged that the basketball federation had promised Nigerians that the team would do exceptionally well in the Afro event adding “I am sure we could not have done better.
“For Spain, I will just tell you this: we are going to do excellently well; we are going to try to do much better than we did in the African championship hoping that we will come within the first three.’’
He noted that the Presidential reward was good motivation for the players but added that D’Tigresses won and brought the cup before the financial reward.
Team Captain, Aisha Mohammed, said the cash award from Buhari would motivate D’Tigresses to do more.
“We feel overjoyed because the president invited us to come here.
“We are excited and we promise to give Nigerian more victories. We will go to Spain and bring more victories by the Grace of God.
“We expect Gold medal by the Grace of God; that is what we are going to bring back home to Nigeria.’’
The Nigerian team beat Senegal in final on Sunday to emerge Africa champions for the third time since 2005.
