The Sports Ministry and the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) have absolved themselves from the incident of the U20 female football team, the Falconets being stranded at the airport in Istanbul, Turkey.
It will be noted that the pictures of the girls went viral on Wednesday after they were seen sleeping on chairs and floor at the airport.
In separate statements, the sports ministry and the NFF said the flight tickets were booked by the world football governing body, FIFA.
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“The Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development and the NFF did not book the tickets. The World Cup is a FIFA tournament. FIFA booked tickets for the team to travel from Bogota to Panama, but for some reason, the flight to Panama was delayed for 3 hours. There was another 1 hour delay at the airport in Panama. By the time the team got to Istanbul, the flight to Abuja had left.
“The NFF officials pleaded that the team be given transit visas at the airport so they could head to a hotel in the town, but this was not possible as Nigeria had been removed from the list of countries granted transit visas at Istanbul Airport. So, the airline took the team to a sleeping area at the airport and handed them tickets to have meals after every 5 hours,” the statement said.
In the same vein, the NFF further said FIFA had failed to issue the team transit visa prior to the commencement of the tournament.
“It would be recalled that the NFF had implored world-governing body, FIFA to intervene with the Embassy of Germany to issue the team transit visas before their departure from Nigeria, in order for the team to be able to travel through Germany. This did not happen,” NFF General Secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi, explained in a statement.
Meanwhile, the NFF rejected reports that the girls were not supplied official footwears and were asked instead to buy their own footwears.
“The players were handed three sets of green jerseys and two sets of white jerseys, several house-wear types and training jerseys. The players opted to wash only their jersey top (no other stuff) because when the first set of body-wear was sent to the laundry people at the hotel, it returned with some FIFA and NFF badges at the front and names at the back peeled by the machine.”
