Wild Card:Nigeria Awaits Fiba's Decision

With just two days to the announcement of the four successful bid for the wild cards for the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup, Nigerian basketball family are pregnant with expectations as the Central Board of the world body meets in Barcelona, Spain on Saturday. Nigeria was the sole African country to apply for the card alongside 14 other countries. The Nigeria Basketball Federation (NBBF), along with 15 other federations met the October 30, 2013 deadline for submission of bids for the wild cards for their national teams and NBBF president Tijanni Umar said in an interview in Abuja that the federation expects to be among the successful bids. He stressed that Nigeria’s basketball would be greatly honoured to be the first African side to bag a wild card for the World Cup following Nigeria;s inability to qualify at the 2013 Afrobasket held in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. The countries that applied for the four available wild cards are, Bosnia-Herzegovina (57), Brazil (10), Canada (25), China (12), Finland (39), Germany (14), Greece (5), Israel (37), Italy (21), Poland (40), Qatar (42), Russia (6), Turkey (7) and Venezuela (28).