Over 300 athletes from different African countries were stranded at Lagos Airport due to unavailability of connecting flights to Asaba for the 2018 Africa Senior Championships.
The athletes were forced to spend the night sleeping on carpets, using their travelling bags as headrests with their bodies all wrapped to prevent them from freezing in the cold in Lagos on Monday.
Some teams, such as Uganda, Morocco and Ivory Coast, had to spend two days at Lagos’ Murtala Mohammed International Airport after the organizers of the 2018 got overwhelmed by the arriving visitors.
And now Delta State Governor Okowa Ifeanyi has come out to clear the air insisting that they were only ready for 46 countries that enlisted to participate in the games but, 52 countries travelled with some arriving in Lagos before they even knew they were participating.
“There is no doubt as I learnt this morning that there were some issues concerning airlifting people to Asaba and I need to make a comment on this because of the general view about it,” said Okowa.
“I did ask last night at the award ceremony what went wrong but the information I got was that initially only 46 countries enlisted to participate in this game but in the last two days the number went from 46 to 52 and some countries actually arrived in Lagos before they even knew they were participating in the championship which of course brought up the situation because our airport's runway is very good.
“It is one of the best in the country but due to major rehabilitation going on in the airport, we have limited aircrafts coming in but the chartered flights that were put down that was supposed to airlift all the athletes was such that it could not accommodate them all but the athletes that have been airlifted this morning with three aircrafts has arrived Asaba.
“The fault was not that of the local organizing committee, these challenges do occur and they have been well attended to.” He added.
