- Says situation was beyond us
The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has described as ‘unfortunate’ the incident where the female national soccer team, the Super Falcons spent over three hours at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja on arrival from Abidjan on Thursday morning.
Regretting that the situation was out of their control, the NFF said; “It was an unfortunate incident because we had our protocol officers on the ground at the airport and they did the needful before the team arrived.”
A statement by the Federation’s General Secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi, said; “We are a responsible organization and the various National Teams have been going out and returning to Nigeria since these COVID-19 protocols, procedures, and guidelines started.
“We have never been caught napping. The issue had to do with COVID-19 protocols and we had no control over how things would be approached by the officials in charge at the airport each time.
“In this particular case, we fulfilled our part of the requirements. However, some other group of individuals arrived at the same time as the Super Falcons’ contingent and were bent on circumventing the process, and this compelled the health officials to adopt stern measures and even lock up some of their offices.
“It was beyond us, but we have already apologized to our players and officials over this incident.”
The Super Falcons qualified for their 14th appearance at the Africa Women Cup of Nations with a 3-0 aggregate win over the Lady Elephants of Ivory Coast on Wednesday.
Upon their return to the country, they were held at the airport by officials of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) over the COVID-19 test.
Nigeria will be competing with 11 other countries for the continental title later this year in Morocco.
