Philip Shaibu Supports Igoche Mark's Initiative to Revive Nigerian Basketball

The Director General of the National Institute for Sports (NIS), Comrade Philip Shaibu, has thrown his weight behind basketball promoter Igoche Mark, urging him to stay the course in his drive to revive and grow the sport in Nigeria.

Shaibu delivered the message in Abuja on Monday when he hosted Mark, who visited the institute to motivate basketball coaches currently in training under his sponsorship.

“I want to thank you for stopping by to see some of our students. I am told that you are sponsoring quite a number of them, and I am confident that this partnership will yield results,” Shaibu said, addressing Mark and the trainees. Then came the challenge. “I thank you for what you have done for basketball, and I plead with you: do not give up on basketball.”

It was more than a courtesy call. The meeting underlined a rare alignment between private initiative and institutional backing at a time when Nigerian basketball has wrestled with administrative crises and stalled momentum.

Mark, Initiator of the Mark D’Ball Basketball Championship, has been bankrolling the coaching programme, aimed at helping former players transition into certified coaches capable of working at elite level.

Standing before the trainees, he turned the spotlight back on Shaibu and the NIS.

“We were here in 2022, but coming here today and seeing the level of transformation, I am not surprised,” Mark said, linking the current state of the institute to Shaibu’s track record. “Having seen what you did in Edo, I know that excellence has always been part of you.

“With people like you in this country, there is hope because you turn things around.”

For Mark, though, the heart of the visit lay on the training floor. The men and women in the classroom once wore jerseys; now they are learning to carry clipboards.

“I came to encourage those undergoing training. They were once players, and now they are transitioning into coaching,” he explained. The message to them was blunt and practical: “Without proper certification, you cannot function on the international scene because you cannot sit on the bench if you are not certified.”

In a sport where talent often outpaces structure, the partnership between NIS and Mark’s programme offers something Nigerian basketball has lacked for years: a deliberate pathway from playing to coaching, from raw enthusiasm to professional standards.

If the coaches in that Abuja hall make the leap, they will not just fill benches. They will shape the next generation of Nigerian players—and, by extension, the future of the game in the country.