Five Junior D’Tigers players disqualified over allegation of age falsification

Nigeria’s campaign at the FIBA U-18 AfroBasket Championship in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, has been plunged into chaos after five of the twelve players originally registered for the Junior D’Tigers were ruled ineligible following FIBA’s mandatory medical age-verification screening.

The disqualifications left the team severely depleted and have reignited concerns over age eligibility in Nigerian basketball, with some of the excluded players understood to have featured for Plateau Peaks of Jos in the Nigeria Basketball Premier League for the past two seasons.

One of the most prominent cases involves Thomas Agbo, who featured in the 2026 Basketball Africa League and whose inclusion in an Under-18 squad had already drawn scrutiny before FIBA’s medical team reportedly declared him overage.

There are also allegations that Nigeria Basketball Federation officials attempted to register the player under the name Thomas Okoh, his middle name, rather than Thomas Agbo.

The federation has continued to protest the exclusions, insisting the players were unfairly ruled out.

Reduced to just seven available players, the Junior D’Tigers were beaten 95-68 by Egypt in their opening game at the Palais des Sports de Treichville, with the North Africans dominating every quarter and Rami Magdy leading six Egyptian players in double figures with seventeen points. Nigeria then suffered a second successive defeat, going down 59-50 to Chad in their Group A fixture, leaving them still searching for their first win of the tournament.

Victor Nwafor top-scored for Nigeria with sixteen points in the Egypt defeat, though his effort could not prevent the depleted side from committing twenty-three turnovers compared to Egypt’s sixteen.

The Junior D’Tigers will now turn to their final group-stage fixture against hosts Ivory Coast on Sunday in a must-win encounter, with the tournament serving as Africa’s qualifier for the 2027 FIBA Under-19 Basketball World Cup in Czechia.

Nigeria’s female counterparts, the Junior D’Tigress, have fared better, opening their campaign with a 54-50 win over Tunisia, inspired by Favour Joy Amari’s fourteen points and nine rebounds. They will face Cameroon on Friday in pursuit of a place at the 2027 FIBA Under-19 Women’s Basketball World Cup in China.

The controversy surrounding the Junior D’Tigers has raised fresh questions about player verification and transparency in Nigeria’s age-grade competitions, with scrutiny likely to fall on how five ineligible players were included in the national Under-18 squad in the first place.