After what seemed like an endless wait for his response to the myriad of mind-boggling issues that rocked the Nigeria Basketball Federation recently, Engr. Ahmadu Kida has come out firing from all angles.
Responding to the allegation that a letter was sent by FEAD for him to explain the sponsorship he got from January 2017 to date, Kida said that he had furnished the Ministry with all the sponsorship contracts entered into by the NBBF as requested by the Ministry.
Kida stated that they responded on the TOTAL Divisions I & II, PEAK, ZENITH, and in-kind sponsorships. However, there was a four-year contract that was entered into by the NBBF in 2017 with a half-yearly payment of $1.1 million, which meant that NBBF should have benefitted about $2.4 million dollars going by the contract terms, for 2017.
” These amounts were never handed over to us from the former board, nor reflected in any of the NBBF accounts, which were never also handed over to us. And so I can not speak to this as we were never involved in it despite our correspondences to the former board and Kwese.
” Well also know that sponsorship contract was entered into by the NBBF with PEAK China for apparel sponsorship to the tune of $75,000. This was never handed over to us and was never reflected in any accounts of the NBBF as well. However, we can not speak to this, also, as we are not involved, even though we have agreed to meet Nigeria’s part of the contract by continuing to use the PEAK apparel in all of our tournaments, as evident even at the Olympics.
” Therefore, rather than chasing shadows and trying to distract attention from real issues, I urge genuinely concerned stakeholders of basketball in Nigeria to ask the past board and the people involved in the Kwese league deal, where is the $1.2m they collected as sponsorship? Into which or whose account it was paid into?
Kids went ahead to explain how he successfully negotiated the Total contract and that the proceeds were reflected in the NBBF sponsorship account.
Speaking further, he stated that the Zenith Bank Sponsorship is purely on the basis of a request for funds on a yearly basis and they just give the NBBF what they can afford out of the request made.
Kids, also stated that NBBF has not received any money from FIBA since 2017.
” As we agreed and insisted that it will be done only through an NBBF Domiciliary account, and not any individual account and this was only recently opened for us by the ministry with the CBN recently,” he added conclusively.
