The Nigerian Tennis Federation has rose up in defence of its President Engr. Sani Ndanusa, whom the Nigeria Olympic Committee disqualified from contesting for the post of president of the NOC in the forthcoming elections.

Nigeria Tennis Federation said its attention has been drawn to the NOC press briefing at the end of their Exco meeting of 18th November, 2009 and are particularly interested in the press list of disqualified candidates on page 2 of the release and the purported suspension of the NTF from NOC activities.

Reacting, the NTF said in fulfillment of Article 26;1;2 of the NOC constitution, that Engr. Sani Ndanusa was first elected as Vice President of the Confederation of Africa Tennis (CAT) and President of CAT zone II (West Africa) at the CAT Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Pretoria, South Africa in April ,2003. In 2007 he was re-elected for the same positions at the CAT AGM inTunis, Tunisia.

The Federation said on the issue of the Nigeria Tennis Federation (NTF) Board elections in reference, the decision to elect Engr. Sani Ndanusa as the President along with other Exco members was unanimous and members of the Nigeria Tennis Federation were present and the Exco members duly elected.

On the issue of suspension of the NTF the statement said "we wish to draw the attention of the NOC Executive Committee that the provision of Article 13:8 of the NOC constitution is very clear which is to the effect that only the Executive Board has the power to suspend a member. In the light of this we wish to state that the action of the Executive Committee in suspending the NTF is ultra-vires and of no effect."

The NTF however noted that while they note the comment by NOC Exco that it will not tolerate unnecessary interference from the NSC, the Nigeria Tennis Federation in the same vein will want to make it unequivocally clear that it will not condone any form of interference in its affairs.