Nigerian Olympic Basketball Player denied being from Nigeria

The popular US based celebrity news website has poked fun at one of Nigeria’s basketball players at the just concluded London Olympic.

Al-Farouq Aminu is an NBA star playing in the Olympics for Nigeria. According to Aminu, he has NEVER ACTUALLY STEPPED FOOT in Nigeria.

Aminu landed himself in trouble when he was pointedly asked “Are you from Nigeria?” He denied being from Nigeria though acknowledging that his father was.

TMZ appears bewildered that a person who is not from a country or who had never been to a country could actually represent that country in any game much less at an Olympic game.

It does however appear that under Nigeria law, Aminu naturally acquired his citizenship of Nigeria from his father’s status as a natural born Nigeria. It is the view of the Liberty Report that Aminu’s natural response should have been “yes, because my parents are Nigerians and the Nigerian constitution permits dual citizenship” rather than the denial especially in view of the context in which the question was lobbed at him. It appears the interview was at the games village in London where Aminu was at the time camped as a Nigerian basketball player!

It is our view that the denial served as fuel that made him into an object of TMZ ridicule.

Thus, Aminu would have been right to claim Nigerian citizenship naturally as well as represent Nigeria at any game.

It is however a considerable moral albatross that Al-Farouq Aminu is patriotic enough to be ready and willing to play for Nigeria but that patriotism never gingered him to claim that he is from Nigeria or even visit Nigeria till his adulthood.

That surely appears akward.