By Peter Ejiofor
London, Aug. 7, 2023: The Nigerian community in South Africa has commended the country’s national women’s basketball team, the D’Tigress, for winning the FIBA Women’s Afrobasket title four conservative times.
The Nigerian team, at the BK Arena, Kigali, Rwanda, defeated Senegal, 84-74 to win the title on Saturday.
The Nigerian team set some new games records in the process, having won 20 games since 2015 and have remained unbeaten, while their coach, Rena Wakama, 31, became the first female head coach to win a women’s Afrobasket title.
“Congratulations to our team. This is a great achievement for our dear country. We are proud of D’ Tigress,’’ Mrs Doris Ikeri-Solarin, the Acting President of Nigerian Union South Africa said in a statement on Monday.
Ikeri-Solarin said from Pretoria that Nigerians in South Africa were happy with the team for the feat achieved.
“We commend D’Tigress for winning the FIBA Women’s Afrobasket title four times in a row. It’s an achievement worth celebrating. The players deserve praise for winning the title,” she said.
According to her, we hope that young girls in Nigeria will be encouraged by the victory to start playing basketball.
“Nigeria is blessed with abundant talents in various games and it’s expected that new talents will be discovered.” she said.
Ikeri-Solarin said that the Nigerian community would continue to identify with the team in all national and international engagements.
