Ejike Ugboaja is a former Nigeria Basketball player who spent most of his playing career in the United States. Currently, he is the founder of Ejike Ugboaja foundation. His foundation discovers and caters for young Nigerians who are desirous of furthering their sporting career, In this interview with some select Sports Journalists, Ugboaja speaks of his passion for advancing the course of mankind in the past, present and future.
Excerpts
Setting up a foundation
I started this foundation as far as 2006 when I was still an active basketball player. I derive joy and fulfilment in taking youths off the street, helping them fulfil their dreams and become someone very important in life.
To my mind, the foundation is important on its yearly activities which we want to increase. We are trying to see how we can help the youth go to school instead of being on the street. To see how we can give them hope. So now, we are going to three different states in Nigeria this season, I mean before the end of the year.
I’m begging the youths to invest in sport, and we can see how we can help them to go to school to make sure they can meet their dream. The foundation just concluded a sports programme in Nasarawa state which was a big success and the foundation gave three scholarships out, and we are going to Anambra this weekend to continue the event. After Anambra, we head to Kaduna. Before the end of this year, I’m trying to pick at least 15 people that will develop and give scholarships.
Years of drive
Since 2006, and till date, we’ve been doing it and the youths that have been our success, one of them is right here. He is currently staying in the United States. There are many others we have mentored and supported that are doing well in the United State and other parts of the world.
Currently, we have over 2000 Nigerian youth that have been In the US. All have got their degrees. Some of them had their masters, and they are living a better life right now and some of them came back this Christmas to help the youth too.
Now, we basically want to include some of the ones that are not doing sport to come into sport. We will start teaching them how to do the sport, one of the scholarship students didn’t know how to do sport, so now is the time to teach him how to do the sport all together because sport really helps you generally. You know health wise sport helps you so now once you engage you will not be idle.
Sport is a whole lot. In the US, sports men and women are very smart people. They have great ideas. They are even among the richest. From a very poor background, you see someone who ventures into sports, he or she starts developing, before you know it, great talent is born and the person starts earning so much without further stress.
All we need now is support to enable us to continue what we are doing. With support from individual and corporate bodies, even the government, we can do more.
Basketball in Nigeria
Yes, Nigeria has qualified for various international competitions including Olympic games, but we still have a lot to do locally. We need every hand on deck to make our league work. I want to watch league games anytime in Nigeria. Basically, we just all need to come together and put hands together, not one person, every individual has to come together and think how we better it as one. You cannot leave it for the president, no, everybody has to come together to make it look good.
Quality of Nigerian stars
Already, we have a quality of players who can match Lebron James and the like in the NBA. There bayo, the one in Miami Heat is a Nigerian. What I’m interested in is for us to start building Nigerians in Nigeria. Look at Achunwa, He is a first round pick. Look at Jannis, he is a Lebron quality, he is a Nigerian too. We have many basketball talents, that is not in doubt. But what I’m saying is that once we build our home better, we can start building more people here because Jannis was not born in the US, he was born in Nigeria.
When we get our youths in order, they will flow. In Nigeria, we don’t believe that a kid can do sports and still be intelligent, but in the US, the most intelligent people are sports people to be very honest, and they are the richest. This is made possible because the platform they have put in place makes it easy for people to flourish and do exploits. Anyway, we can get better with time with necessary support in Nigeria.
