After initial fear that Nigeria’s national basketball team, D’Tigers, might not participate in the 2025 FIBA AfroBasket championships over lack of funds from the government, the team has now made a last-minute arrival in Tunisia for the qualifiers.

The team had announced its forfeiture of the 2025 FIBA AfroBasket qualifiers scheduled to begin in Tunisia on Friday over a lack of funds from the Bola Tinubu-led government.

However, in a surprising turn of events on Friday, the D’Tigers on its official X, formerly Twitter, account announced that members of the squad have arrived in time for their opening match of the tournament against Libya today. 

According to multiple reports, the game between Nigeria and Libya had earlier been scheduled to take place at 2:00 p.m. today but was moved by FIBA to 8:00 p.m., stating it was to “ensure the integrity of the competition, for logistics reasons and with the agreement of the TV broadcasters”.

D’Tigers are drawn in Group B of the qualifiers alongside Cape Verde, Uganda and Libya. The qualifiers will provide the 16 teams to participate in the next year’s tournament.

Meanwhile, it is unclear who came to the team’s rescue to be able to travel to Tunisia for the tournament — private individuals have been able to fund teams for tournaments whenever the government fails.