Musa Kida points the way forward for Basketball

Musa Kidda is a board member of the Nigeria Basketball Federation and South South Coordinator of the Federation who recently organised a basketball league in Port Harcourt. Kidda speaks with nigeriasports.com on his dream for basketball in the country.

Nigeriasports.com: your full names please
Musa Kidda: I am Musa Kidda Ahmadu, and I am the zonal representative for the South South zone of the Nigerian Basketball Federation.  I am also Chairman of the Rivers State Basketball Association. I am also the vice President of the Africa handicap basketball. Those are basically my sports credentials.

Nigeriasports.com: what is the concept of this league.

MK: the concept of the metro league is one I had with a friend, Col. Ahmedu who is also a member of the Nigerian Basketball Federation. About three years ago we wanted to start this metro league, but the NBBF thought at that time that we were instituting a league that was going to be in competition with its major premier league. So the concept basically is to move basketball in this zone to the next level and also for professionalism, be private industry driven.

Nigeriasports.com: who are the sponsors of the South South Metro League?

MK: the sponsors are basically friends of mine who are very well known to me, who know very well that we are going to use their money very judiciously and also put their money into good use. We on our own side have pledged to them that we are going to account for every kobo that they have given us.

Nigeriasports.com: how often would you have this league played?

MK: quarterly basis will just be a bit too much, especially for the interstate movement within the zone. Best bet would be to hold it annually so every year there will be the metro league held in one of the states of South South. We also want to change the format next year into a youth affair and not a state representation kind of thing. The idea is for development of sports people.

Nigeriasports.com: what about the turnout of clubs in this edition. You consider it as okay?

MK: we really did not really expect that we would have as many as eight out of nine teams. We heard news of financial crunch in all the states and the teams that came here had to dig deep to finance themselves. I can also confirm to you that we had many requests from teams in the Savannah conference and Atlantic conference. At least five of them expressed interest in case we don’t have enough teams for the league, but as you can see we have enough.

Nigeriasports.com: What is your take on the involvement of government in sports.

MK: I know that is not the way to go. The way to go really is to make sports private industry driven since that way we can have some form of professionalism in the sport thereby getting players to earn money for what they play and getting sponsors to get benefits by way of exposure and by way of participation in such tournaments.

Nigeriasports.com: does Rivers State have a basketball team?

MK: on a very frank basis, Rivers State has various teams. We have a state team and we also have many other clubs and I will also confess to you that there are two clubs right now in Port Harcourt who enlisted in case we are not able to complete the numbers for the league. My own personal opinion is that the state team is an old team that must be changed in terms of getting younger players to succeed them.

   

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