CHARLES OGUNDIYA 
Olalekan Ajayi, a former player of Nigerian men’s basketball team, D’Tigers, expressed in an interview with CHARLES OGUNDIYA of New Telegraph that he believes the best way for sports to flourish in the country is by having former athletes who have played the game run for leadership of the sector. Excerpts…
compare your time back then and now. What was it like then, and how does it compare to now? You know, it’s a disgrace. It’s a disaster. For me personally, I will say the last time there was basketball in this country was during Tijani Umar’s tenure as the president of the Nigeria Basketball Federation.
That’s the last time. For the past few years, there has been no league for both male and female players. This is a disgrace, it’s distasteful, and it’s a shame.
Whoever is in Nigerian basketball should be ashamed of themselves. They are a disgrace to humanity. I’m saying this so you guys can understand. Look at the Olympics, the Nigerian men’s basketball team, the D’Tigers, could not even qualify. Our U-18 teams (male and female) went to Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire on a bus.
What kind of a disgrace is this? I mean, even saying this, I can’t just cry because when I was playing with the Dodan Warriors when we joined, there was an academy at Rowe Park in Lagos, and there was a City League. Apart from the Premier League,. That’s what they do in Angola. I played in Angola when I was playing pro. I played for Petro Athletic. We had the main team, there was the second team.
So when we do these things, there’s an opportunity because of the growth. When the seniors get older, the juniors team come up. We don’t have anything like that in this country. Like, are you people happy with what is going on in the Nigerian league? There’s no league.
So if there’s no league, what happens to the players? Do they become farmers? What happened to the referees? Everyone connected to the league—the people that are making money in basketball that’s how they feed themselves, there’s nothing, and they become jobless.
When people are jobless, what do they do? They go into the street and start doing bad things. Do you understand that the only time basketball happens in Nigeria is when Americans come to run camps in Nigeria? Even the states don’t run camps; nobody runs camps. It has been a total disgrace.
When they want to play BAL, they play for three weeks or a month just to get a team to represent the country, Is this what we’re going to be doing?compare your time back then and now. What was it like then, and how does it compare to now? You know, it’s a disgrace. It’s a disaster.
For me personally, I will say the last time there was basketball in this country was during Tijani Umar’s tenure as the president of the Nigeria Basketball Federation. That’s the last time. For the past few years, there has been no league for both male and female players. This is a disgrace, it’s distasteful, and it’s a shame. Whoever is in Nigerian basketball should be ashamed of themselves. They are a disgrace to humanity.
I’m saying this so you guys can understand. Look at the Olympics, the Nigerian men’s basketball team, the D’Tigers, could not even qualify. Our U-18 teams (male and female) went to Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire on a bus. What kind of a disgrace is this? I mean, even saying this, I can’t just cry because when I was playing with the Dodan Warriors when we joined, there was an academy at Rowe Park in Lagos, and there was a City League. Apart from the Premier League,.
That’s what they do in Angola. I played in Angola when I was playing pro. I played for Petro Athletic. We had the main team, there was the second team. So when we do these things, there’s an opportunity because of the growth. When the seniors get older, the juniors team come up. We don’t have anything like that in this country. Like, are you people happy with what is going on in the Nigerian league?
There’s no league. So if there’s no league, what happens to the players? Do they become farmers? What happened to the referees? Everyone connected to the league—the people that are making money in basketball that’s how they feed themselves, there’s nothing, and they become jobless. When people are jobless, what do they do? They go into the street and start doing bad things.
Do you understand that the only time basketball happens in Nigeria is when Americans come to run camps in Nigeria? Even the states don’t run camps; nobody runs camps. It has been a total disgrace. When they want to play BAL, they play for three weeks or a month just to get a team to represent the country, Is this what we’re going to be doing?
I could recall that there has been a Zenith Basketball Women’s League in the last few years, are you saying that was not enough?
Is that how to organize a proper league? How many weeks was the league? The final was like a week, is that not a disgrace to humanity? Tell me the league you have seen in the world that is organized for one week, even in India, it was not done that way. Nigerian basketball only functions because of American-born Nigerians.
That’s the only reason. Go to Angola now. Go to Egypt. Go to Tunisia. They have leagues. 70% or 80% of the players in the national team are from their local leagues.
Are you telling me those countries are better than Nigeria? This always happens when you go and hire somebody who doesn’t know about basketball to be in the position. These people are just power-hungry. They don’t know anything about it. They are power-hungry.
You have said a lot about the challenges and the leadership problems in the NBBF, the election is just around the corner, who do you think should come in?
I think whoever is going to be the NBBF president should be a former player, someone who played the game. Someone who understands the needs of the players. Look at Babs Ogunade, he was once a national team player. He knows the pains of players. He knows what it takes to wear that jersey. People like that should be the president, not the vice president.
All these things are drawing us back. I’m telling you, there will not be grassroots basketball progress in this country. It will not happen. Because it has not been happening for the last few years now. Now look at the female team.
There’s no one playing in the league on that team that got to the quarterfinals at the Olympics. Look at every other team, how many of their local base players were on their team? It’s a common sense. This is not rocket science. When you invest and you trust in your players, in your country, you develop them.
When you don’t develop them, do you know what happened? You only rely on those trained by others. How do you want to be a federation president when you can’t even sit with three to five corporate organizations to invest in your federation? You can’t get deals from the likes of Dangote and the rest, why are you there? A camouflage? These people are setting this game back. We need people who know what they’re doing.
You came to Nigeria for your foundation’s basketball camp; can you tell us more about it?
Well, Ajayi Elebure is the name of my father. He was from Ekiti State and moved to Lagos; however, he passed away in 2020. So, I decided to keep his name going.
By doing that, I have to do something productive that he wants me to do, by giving back and impacting other people’s lives, especially kids. That’s why I decided to start a non-profit organisation in the United States of America and here in Nigeria called Ajayi Elebure Elites.
Since you said you are from Ekiti State, why Lagos and not your state?
Well, I’ve been doing it in Lagos. And then I decided to do it this year. Actually, I was going to do it in Ekiti but the things that I was going to use, like facilities were not just there.
There’s no court; imagine not just a single outdoor court in Ekiti State. A pavilion court is like a pig pit; it’s nothing. I bring coaches from America, and the national team, I mean, there are no courts to play on. So, I try to see what I can do, but the timing is just so short.
So I decided to come do it here in Lagos. For me to do it in Ekiti, I will need to build a brand new outdoor court, and that’s the target because I want to do something for my people in Ekiti. We are planning to have something in Ekiti by December, and we are working towards that.
The people there want to play, but they don’t have the facilities. Five players came from Ekiti for the basketball camp. They are going home with a basketball, but where are they going to play it? So I will make provisions.
We’re going to make provisions to make sure we put a court in place in Ekiti. We can’t put everything in the hands of the government. Because clearly, they’re not doing it. It’s not done. So I don’t know who is in the position to do it. But, sadly, I can’t go to Ekiti. I, as an Ekiti indigent, cannot go to Ekiti to organize my camp.
Are you that disappointed?
Very disappointed. A whole state does not have two or three outdoor courts where you can say you want to run a camp to give back to the community.
That’s despicable. So I came to Lagos. Lagos is my second home. Ekiti is my first home. So that’s why I brought the camp back here, where it all started. And then the scholarship is gonna be given to Lagosians. Heaven help those who help themselves.
This is the third edition, meaning 15 scholarships already. Since you give out five scholarships for each edition, would you say they have represented the brand very well?
Surely they have done that. Like I said earlier, it’s my non-profit outfit. I use my money; I put my money where my mouth is. I do these things for the people of Nigeria, for the kids, for the coaches. I do it. I take pride in doing it.
I don’t want anything in return. I don’t need anything from anyone. Nobody can give me anything. I just want to use this opportunity, this platform that I have to impact Nigerians to be better.
If I take five players away this time now to America or to Europe, that’s the five generations that I have helped. Not all of them will make the NBA, but I can guarantee they will get a degree.
They will have scholarships. They will go to school because if you don’t become a basketball player, you can still use basketball as a tool to be successful. You go to America, and if you read engineering or medicine or law, whatever, you can still get a job and still make good money and take care of your family. That is the purpose of this.
