Three leading commercial banks in Nigeria, Access, Zenith and Guaranty Trust Bank have splashed a whopping N200m on the country’s national basketball teams, D’Tigers and D’Tigress to support their participation in the forthcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The support from the banks is a response to the adoption initiative of the Ministry of Youth and Sports Development under the Minister, Sunday Dare.
Against the background of their recent performance, the men and women’s basketball teams of Nigeria are highly favoured to deliver at the Tokyo Olympics.
The Ministry of Sports yesterday noted that Zenith, Access and Guarantee Trust (GT) banks responded in a timely fashion to the appeal by the minister for corporate organisations to adopt the national teams.
While D’Tigers got $100,000, D’Tigress also got $100,000 as support to prosecute their participation at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
The Ministry also expressed its appreciation to the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, who was central to the process leading to the adoption.
The Ministry further thanked the Group Managing Director/CEO of Zenith Bank Mr. Ebenezer N. Onyeagwu, Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Access Bank, Mr. Herbert Wigwe, Managing Director/CEO of GT Bank, Mr. Segun Agbaje and their financial institutions for adopting the national basketball teams.While assuring that there is still room for other corporate organizations to adopt Olympic bound athletes and teams, the Ministry expressed confidence that the financial support has further brightened Nigeria’s chances of clinching gold in basketball. (DailyTrust)
