By 3pm on Monday, two matches had already been played at the Enugu centre, where Phase Two of the Nigeria Basketball Men’s Premier League got underway over the weekend. The games began early enough after the NBBF upgraded the lighting in the hall and brought in a brand-new upright from the Webber Engineering stores in Lagos, through the South East representative on the NBBF board, Ugo Udezue.
“We had already decided to improve the lighting and change the upright before it got damaged. As we know, the hall is not owned by the NBBF, just as the equipment is used as in other centres, but we decided to improve on everything here. We couldn’t change the systems by Sunday as originally planned because of a little hitch the manufacturers got at the Lagos airport.
“There is no big deal about a power failure happening during a competition. We are all familiar with electricity here. Backboards get broken in the biggest leagues across the globe; it’s nothing new,” Udezue said.
The South East Basketball Association Media Manager, Kennedy Onwunali, had on Sunday spoken against what he described as a deliberate campaign by some individuals to frustrate the growth of basketball in the South East and Nigeria at large.
Onwunali said the temporary power failure experienced during the Nigeria Premier Basketball League (NPBL) Phase Two competition in Enugu should not be used as a distraction from the historic achievement of bringing the premier basketball event to the region.
“Power failure in sports is not a new story. Unfortunately, some people have decided to ignore the bigger picture and focus on a temporary challenge instead of celebrating the progress made in bringing the NPBL to the Southeast,” Onwunali stated.
Credit: Pius Ayinor
