The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has disclosed that Falconets overstayed at the Istanbul Airport in Turkey due to delay in transit visas for the players and officials.
The U20 female national team was reportedly stranded having stayed 24 hours at the airport in Turkey on their way from the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup and pictures of the players sleeping on the airport floor surfaced on social media.
NFF, however, reacted on Wednesday that a number of factors, including the inability to secure transit visas caused the delay.
According to the General Secretary of NFF, Dr. Mohammed Sanusi, “the NFF did not book the team’s tickets from Costa Rica; FIFA did. FIFA also did not envisage the hitches that saw the team delayed for more than three hours in Bogota, and another one hour in Panama. By the time the team got to Istanbul, the flight to Abuja had left.
“Our officials pleaded for compassionate transit visas so as to take the players and officials to a hotel inside the town, but this was not possible as they were informed that Nigeria had been removed from the list of countries whose citizens were issued visa-on-arrival in Turkey.
“The airline then took the team to a sleeping area at the airport and gave them tickets to have meals every five hours. This situation has nothing to do with NFF, who had made arrangements to receive the team in Abuja before the complications in travel arrangements,” Dr. Sanusi said.
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