Players and officials of the Customs men basketball team are praying and hoping that they are able to make the trip to Egypt next month for the final playoffs of the African men’s club championship. The competition is billed to hold in Egypt from December 7 to 15.
A member of the Customs squad, who pleaded anonymity, said the players were still not certain if they would be in the North African country with barely two weeks for the teams to arrive in Cairo.
He said, “We are training as a group but I am not sure that everyone in the team now believes that we will make the African final. We are encouraging the players to have faith and believe that everything is possible given the way we made the trip to Lome, Togo for the Zone Three qualifiers.
“Then it looked like we were never going to travel, but we still made it at the last moment and we returned to the country with a ticket to the continental final.”
He explained that communication hitches in Abuja created the situation for the team based in Lagos.
“The explanation given to our Comptroller in Abuja was that we qualified to represent Nigeria and so we were congratulated with the expectation that the sports ministry would take over from there as we were going to fly the country’s flag. A correction has been made to that misunderstanding and we are now praying that we are able to get the funds early enough before it becomes too late for the jump ball.”
