Australian basketball player Elizabeth Folake Cambage, who was involved in a hurtful incident where she used a hurtful word towards the D’Tigress team during a practice match before the 2021 Olympics, has surprisingly announced her plan to play for Nigeria in the next Olympic Games in Paris.
Even though Cambage, who used to play for the Opals (the Australian women's basketball team), is accused of making disrespectful comments and telling the D’Tigress team to return to their less developed country during a disagreement that occurred when Australia faced Nigeria before the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, she is now saying that she wants to represent Nigeria in the Olympics.
Cambage's harsh words were specifically aimed at Victoria Macaulay, a Nigerian player, and she even pushed her with her elbow during a practice game in Las Vegas that was not open to the public.
According to Bleacher Reports, the tall basketball player (she's 2.06 meters tall), whose father is actually Nigerian, has informed them that she's working on leaving the Australian team so she can play for Nigeria.
She explained, "We're taking steps for me to leave the Australian team and play for Nigeria. I've been in communication with them since this incident happened. This is what I mean – people don't know the whole story."
Cambage, who has always denied making racist remarks against the Nigerians, contradicts the accounts of players from both teams who were present that day. She's trying to downplay the incident by saying there are videos of the event that will prove her innocence.
She stated, "Many girls don't like me, but I don't resort to racially offensive insults. That's not how I behave. I'm very supportive of Black people. I didn't say those things to those girls."
She's demanding that the videos of the incident be made public to show the truth. She claims that even though many people in Australia have seen the videos, they are still lying about what's on them.
However, there seems to be opposition to her plan to change nationalities quietly. Promise Amukamara, one of Nigeria's top players, responded to Cambage's statements on the social media platform X (previously known as Twitter), saying, "I'm sorry, but this isn't true. Everyone from both teams has the same story except her, so you do the math... the only person she has been working closely with was the former coach of our national team, and he's not the coach anymore, so there's that!"
