The Nigerian-born duo of Nneka Ogwumike and Elizabeth Williams remain in the plans of the country’s female basketball national team, D’Tigress, despite not been cleared to feature for the squad at this year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.
Megasportsarena.com reports that this much has been disclosed by a top source at Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF), who affirmed that Ogwumike and Williams will stay in line to feature at the African Basketball Championship and FIBA World Cup.
The NBBF source disclosed as much following reports that Ogwumike and Williams had to be excluded from Otis Hughley’s squad to Tokyo because world basketball governing body, FIBA upheld United States’ objection to the inclusion of both players and ruled them ineligible for Nigeria.
While Nneka is out of the games, her sister, Erica, is in the 12-woman list, along with Adaora Elonu, Aisha Balarabe, Elizabeth Balogun, Promise Amukamara, Atonye Nyingifa, Ezinne Kalu, Pallas Kunaiyi-Akpannah and Ify Ibekwe.
Hughley, who led the team to the 2019 Afrobasket win in Senegal, also picked Oderah Chidom, Victoria Macaulay and Amy Okonkwo to compete in Tokyo, where the trio are in line to make their competitive debuts for Nigeria.
On the other hand, Nneka and Williams, who both feature in USA’s Women National Basketball Association (WNBA) had to be left out of the final roster, despite being listed in the provisional roll call by Hughley, after their inclusion was challenged by the United States, which they had previously represented at senior level.
Nigeria took the case to Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS), which fixed judgment on the appeal for July 26, but Hughley opted to leave them out all together because of the high level of uncertainty surrounding their eligibility.
Nonetheless, the NBBF source has now disclosed that Ogwumike and Williams will be kept in view for the AfroBasket and World Cup, for which they would be eligible if they were eventually cleared to start playing for Nigeria.
The credible source expatiated thus: “Nigeria will play its first game on July 27 and including the duo in the list could work against us if their appeal is not upheld by CAS.
“Once the competition starts, no team is allowed to substitute any player on its roster. That could mean that if their disqualification is upheld by CAS, Nigeria would be two players short.”
All this controversy comes at a point Ogwumike should be preparing to wind down her career — six times chosen to a WNBA all-star team, winner of a league MVP award and a WNBA champion after being its top draft pick in 2012 out of Stanford.
However, an article in Washington Post newspaper argued that her absence from the Games in Tokyo is simply because of ‘an error by USA Basketball’s subjective selection process that left her, at 31, off its women’s Olympic roster again.’
The article added: “That she’ll not be in Tokyo is a blunder by FIBA, the international basketball governing body, which refused to let Ogwumike exercise her other citizenship in Nigeria, the birth home of her parents, and play for the green and white.
“That she won’t finally be at an Olympics is because of the over-officiousness of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which on Monday doubled down on FIBA’s decision that Ogwumike, born and bred in Texas, played too long in USA Basketball’s program to be anything but a ringer for Nigeria’s national team.
“Maybe saddest, Ogwumike was victimized by the unnecessarily muddled mind-set of being a dual-citizenship athlete in this country too divorced psychically from her homeland of heritage to make an unapologetic decision.
“Ogwumike — and Atlanta’s Elizabeth Williams, who was also denied by international ruling from playing for Nigeria despite being born to Nigerian parents — shouldn’t have opted to play internationally for any team other than D’Tigress, as the Nigerian women are nicknamed.
“Not just in the past few weeks, but from the moment it was clear she would blossom into a standout athlete.”
