Sports

Abuja · Friday 11 September 2026

The federal government has paid the naira equivalent of 100,000 dollars to each D'Tigress player, completing the presidential reward promised after their AfroBasket win. The National Sports Commission confirmed the payment.

Sixteen outlets carried it inside a few hours, which tells you something about how unusual the event is.

**basketball court players team celebration** Photograph by Lesli Whitecotton via Unsplash.

Why a payment becomes national news

Because in Nigerian sport the announcement and the payment are two separate events, often separated by months, and sometimes the second one never happens. Athletes have gone public about unpaid bonuses after almost every major championship cycle for two decades.

The comparison to hand. The Super Falcons were promised 100,000 dollars per player after WAFCON. The flats were handed over. The cash was still being finalised between the sports commission, the finance ministry and the Accountant-General as recently as this month.

What "the naira equivalent" quietly means

Stage	Who bears the currency risk
Promise made in dollars	Nobody yet
Delay between promise and payment	The athlete
Paid in naira at the rate on the day	The athlete

A dollar promise settled in naira months later is not the same promise.

This is not an accusation that anybody was short-changed. It is a description of how the arithmetic works. The longer the gap between announcement and transfer, the more the real value of a dollar-denominated award depends on a rate the athlete does not control.

The women won the tournament. Then they waited. The waiting is the part that never appears in the announcement.

The women's sport angle nobody makes explicit

D'Tigress are among the most successful teams Nigeria has, in any sport, of any gender. Their record at AfroBasket is the kind of sustained dominance the men's football team has never managed. They still operate with a fraction of the visibility, and their prize money still becomes a news story when it lands rather than a routine line in a budget.

What would make this ordinary

A published schedule attached to every reward announcement: the amount, the currency, the source of funds and the date. Three of those four are already public every time. The missing one is the date, and it is the only one the athlete actually needs.

Until then, Nigerian athletes will keep learning what they earned from a press release and finding out when they are paid from their bank app.

Reporting: Vanguard, Channels Television, PM News and the National Sports Commission.