February 23, (THEWILL) – The triumphant return of the victorious senior women’s national football team, the Super Falcons, to Nigeria after their exploits against Ivory Coast, which ought to have been celebrated turned sour after their ordeal at the hands of airport officials over COVID-19 tests that left the ladies and crew stranded at the airport for hours.
As THEWILL reported on Wednesday, the Super Falcons beat the Lady Elephants of Ivory Coast 1-0 at the Stade Robert Champroux in Abidjan, in the second leg of their 2022 Africa Women Cup of Nations (AWCON) qualifier to punch their ticket for the tournament later this year in Morocco.
Their victory was celebrated on social media as congratulatory posts went viral and the Super Falcons trended across active platforms while the ladies boarded a plane to return home from Ivory Coast.
What should have been a glorious return and triumphant welcome soon turned nightmarish for the worn-out victorious ambassadors of the country and nine-time African champions that had just secured qualification for another AWCON, in the hands of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), which denied them entry into Abuja.
The verification of their COVID-19 test was the reason put forward for the delay at the airport even though they explained that before leaving Ivory Coast, the players and coaching crew had to pass a COVID-19 test at the Abidjan airport.
It made it all the more perplexing as to why the NCDC insisted on detaining them at the airport for almost four hours despite having tested negative prior to boarding.
There are reports that claim that some players passed out at the airport while others cried before they were finally released. While the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is yet to explain why the players and crew were forced to wait so long after all they had gone through, videos from the airport have been shared online.
In one of the videos, an exhausted coach Randy Waldrum could not understand the rationale for their ordeal and admitted that it was “very frustrating” especially after their difficult game and the tiring “two-hour flight from Ivory Coast.”
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
