The Nigeria Football Federation, NFF, has said the Super Falcons spending over three hours at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja on arrival from Abidjan on Thursday morning was an ‘unfortunate’ incident that was out of their control.
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 Covid-19 test.
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“It was an unfortunate incident, because we had our protocol officers on ground at the airport and they did the needful before the team arrived,” NFF General Secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi, said in a statement obtained by Vanguard
“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.”
Nigeria will compete with 11 other teams for the title later this year in Morocco