Why Nigeria’s footballers are boycotting their AFCON game against Libya

Published

10 months ago

October 15, 2024

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Nigeria’s football players have said they are going to boycott Tuesday’s African Cup Of Nations (AFCON) qualifier in Libya after being stranded at an airport in the country overnight, in what the team’s captain called “mind games”.

The Super Eagles squad was expected to land at Benghazi Airport on Sunday, but as the charter flight was descending, it was diverted to Al Abraq, 200km away, with no alternative transport offered, the Nigerian Football Federation said.

Captain William Troost-Ekong said no reason was given for the change, adding that the airport’s gates had been locked and the group had been left “without phone connection, food or drink. All to play mind games”.

But after being stranded there for more than 16 hours, he said he and the team had “decided that we will not play this game,” adding that “mistakes happen, but these things on purpose have nothing to do with international football”.

After the party arrived home on Monday evening, he posted another update, saying “back home, safe and sound” and other social media posts showed them celebrating in the airport in Kano, in northern Nigeria.

The Libyan Football Federation (LFF) said it regretted the flight diversion but suggested on X it may have been down to “routine air traffic control protocols, security checks, or logistical challenges”.

Pictures posted online by the players showed some of them lying on airport seats, their luggage beside them, and no other passengers in sight. In other pictures, players were sleeping.

Nigeria’s star striker Victor Osimhen, who was ruled out of the game with an injury, had no doubt it was a deliberate move, accusing their opponents of trying to “weaken and ruin the morale” of his teammates.

Osimhen compared it on Instagram to a “hostage situation”, advising his colleagues to return home, as they are not “criminals or prisoners”.

On Monday the LFF said in a statement on X its team faced similar issues as they arrived in Nigeria for Friday’s first leg in Uyo, which Nigeria won 1-0.

Shortly before landing at an airport close to the match venue, the LFF said, airport officials told the pilot to head to a different airport around 350km away.

It said they were treated “unprofessionally” by airport security staff and had to travel “through forest and jungle roads in the middle of the night without any security escort”.

Cars were hired “to take staff and team supplies from the airport we arrived at to the hotel in the other city where we stayed”.

Libya’s captain Faisal al Badri said they were delayed “from one city to another” for three hours after their bags were searched.

Nigeria’s Football Federation denied the claims.

The country’s sports minister John Owan Enoh said he had instructed the soccer federation to send a formal complaint to African football chiefs, saying in a statement it needed to be “on record and thoroughly addressed”.

The Confederation Africaine de Football (CAF) said in a statement it has contacted authorities in both countries after learning the Nigerian squad was “stranded in disturbing conditions for several hours at an airport that they were allegedly instructed to land by the Libyan authorities”.

It has referred the matter to its disciplinary board to investigate and “appropriate action will be taken” if its rules were broken, it said.

Among the players in Nigeria’s squad are Ademola Lookman, who scored a hat trick for Atalanta in the Europa League final last season and is on the Ballon d’Or shortlist, and Victor Boniface, a striker for German champion Bayer Leverkusen.

Premier League players Ola Aina, Calvin Bassey, Alex Iwobi, Taiwo Awoniyi, and Wilfred Ndidi were involved in Friday’s game.

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Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

3 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

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Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

9 hours ago

August 10, 2025