Nairobi City Thunder’s hopes took a hit after suffering their fourth loss on Thursday, falling 91-104 to Libya’s Al Ahli Tripoli (AHT) in the Basketball Africa League (BAL) Nile Conference. The Kenyan side now prepares to face South Africa’s Made By basketball (MBB) today at 3.30pm, ahead of their final group game against Rwanda’s APR tomorrow at 6.30pm.

Adding to the team’s woes, star point guard Derrick Mokenye Ogechi was shockingly dropped from the squad after being ruled ineligible under FIBA regulations, leaving fans and experts stunned as Thunder struggle for momentum.

The NCT basketball team’s professional player Ogechi has ominously been missing from team’s roster featuring players competing at the ongoing BAL Nile Conference championship, sending tongues of the team’s ardent fans wagging as to possible reasons for the exclusion of such a skilled player, arguably leading to Thunder’s dented BAL Season 5 campaign in Rwanda.

Questions about Ogechi’s absence from the Thunder basketball team bench started emerging as the BAL Nile Championship tipped off on May 17, 2025, featuring four teams: hosts Rwanda Patriotic (APR), Libya’s AHT, South Africa’s MBB, which qualified to compete at the games through a BAL wild card, and Kenya’s representatives, Thunder.

Dual citizenship

Ogechi, a point guard, was signed by Thunder last year before the Kenyan men’s Premier League champions embarked on preparations to compete in the Road to BAL Group Stage and Elite 16 Stage, held in Kibaha City, Tanzania and Nairobi City, Kenya.
The vastly experienced Ogechi who holds dual citizenship as an American and Kenyan (and stands at 6 feet 1 inch) previously played for Spanish basketball club Coto Córdoba CB.

Alongside teammate Eugene Adera, he played for Kenya’s men’s national team, The Morans, in the AfroCan tournament in Angola in July 2023.

Earlier this year, Ogechi was part of Kenya’s Morans team to the Afrobasket qualifiers in Cairo, Egypt.

However, during BAL’s opening day game in Rwanda on May 17 between Thunder and hosts APR, keen fans and basketball pundits noticed the conspicuous absence of NCT player Ogechi from the team bench.

During the heart-rending opener match, Thunder was trounced 92-63 by hosts APR, to the chagrin of Kenyan NCT fans as they groped in the dark regarding Ogechi’s whereabouts, missing from the team bench at the BAL Nile Conference.

Clinging to hope that the tide would change the next day, on May 18, Thunder suffered another shock defeat, 115-87.
During the team’s third match against South Africa’s MBB, NCT went down fighting, 74-75.

Roster eligibility

Kenyan basketball coaches, among them Division One League team tactician Emmanuel Ochieng’, Women’s Premier League Equity Hawks coach Ben Oluoch, and national women’s basketball team coach George Mayienga, in separate interviews with Wikendi Sport, attributed and blamed Thunder’s three consecutive losses on a litany of factors: a measure of players’ inexperience, poor player recruitment and funding to support the exercise, lack of lucrative salary packages to retain valuable players, stage fright, lack of well-resourced team sponsorship, and poor decision-making by the team’s technical bench led by head coach Brad Ibs.

Little did scores of Kenyan basketball fans and coaches know that BAL rules on team player roster eligibility had barred Ogechi from featuring at the BAL Nile Conference championship in Rwanda.

Ironically, Equity Hawks coach Oluoch, in an interview with Wikendi Sport, sounded privy to BAL-related reasons surrounding why US-born Ogechi who holds dual citizenship including Kenyan was missing from the bench.

Kenya Basketball Federation (KBF) Secretary General (SG) Angela Luchivya confirmed that Ogechi was barred from featuring for Thunder due to BAL rules and regulations on team player roster eligibility for the various BAL championship stages.

“BAL rules barred Ogechi. Under the rules, the player is considered an African diaspora player, meaning he was not born in Kenya and did not nurture his basketball skills in Kenya after the age of 16 years. Ogechi is not a native Kenyan,” Luchivya explained.
Luchivya shared with this writer a document referenced BAL Operations Manual Season 2025, stipulating team player roster eligibility rules and capping the maximum number of team players at 16.

African diaspora

The BAL document classifies players who qualify for team roster eligibility as African players, African diaspora players, foreign players and national players.

Ogechi is classified as an African diaspora player — a player who has at least one parent who is or was a national of an African country and has acquired the nationality of such parent’s African country in one of the following ways: through bi-nationality with acquisition of documents proving nationality on or after the age of 16 years, by naturalisation, or after the age of 16 years and is 30 years of age or under. 

Luchivya further said that, according to the BAL document, African diaspora players also fall under the foreign player classification, which includes diaspora, African, and non-African players.

Under BAL foreign player rules, a BAL team is allowed to field five foreign players. Thunder has more than five foreign players, and it appears NCT’s bench was forced to consider and drop Ogechi.

Kenyan fans who expected Ogechi to feature for Thunder at the BAL Nile Conference championship believe the player’s presence would have helped NCT post more favourable and impressive results to qualify for BAL playoffs alongside other teams from the three conferences, Kalahari, Sahara and Nile.