Names the tournament’s MVP award after his late father
Louis Edem basketball tournament, Lagos, Nigeria, February 2023
By Rasheed Adewuyi
Two-time Nigerian basketball league most valuable player Louis Edem Ekpenyong is set to host an elite national basketball championship from February 7-11th, 2023, in honor of his father, who passed during the COVID pandemic in 2020.
The tournament is set to feature 8 Premier league teams from across Nigeria competing for the grand price of 2 million Naira, with the runners-up going home with 1 million Naira and the tournament MVP award named after his father, engineer Francis Ekpenyong going home with a 100,000 Naira cash reward.
Edem, now an Information Technology Engineer in Maryland, United States, in high praise of his dad, said the tournament is to honor his father, Engineer Ekpenyong, for his role in his life.
Edem said, “He played a major role in who I am today.”
“I don’t pay tithes to any church, so this is my tithe. I am giving back to the basketball community, which I love and care about, and to do this in honor of my father means everything to me”.
The one-time West African university league MVP and two-time Nigeria, Basketball League MVP started his professional career in 1998, when he debuted for Kada stars of Kaduna in the then 7up Premier League. He later played for Jigawa Rocks in 2000, then Yelwa Hawks of Bauchi from 2001 to 2003, before joining Union Bank basketball club in 2004 till 2006, where he took his talents off the shores of Nigeria to play in international leagues across the globe.
The tournament will be hosted at the national stadium, Surulere, Lagos, and is expected to be engaging and richly rewarding for the basketball community in Nigeria.
