Kenyans unmoved by Nigeria chaos

Kenyan Track and Field team to the Senior Africa Athletics Championships in Asaba, Nigeria, at Mutrtal Mohammed International Airport on Tuesday, July 31, 2018. [Standard Sports]

Kenya’s track and field athletes have vowed to use Lagos chaos as inspiration to top the medal table at Senior Athletics Championships in Nigeria.

Teams arriving for the African premier athletics competition were met by absolute chaos ranging from delayed to cancelled flights at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos Nigeria.

Alongside Kenya, Morocco, Uganda, Sudan and the Ivory Coast spent up to four days at the airport as the disgraced Local Organizing Committee (LOC) buried their heads in the sand, nearly triggering a boycott of the event, now underway in the State of Asaba, 440km East of Lagos.

Despite the frustration, the Kenyan charges have resolved to top the medal table for the fourth time as Athletics Kenya said they would petition Confederation of African Athletics and IAAF over the chaos.

We are dissapointed

“As a team, we are going to use the frustration in Lagos as inspiration and make sure we leave Nigeria as the champions of the 2018 Africa Senior Athletics Championships,” said Maureen Jelagat, the 400m hurdles silver medalist in the event in Durban two years ago.

AK said: “As a country, we are disappointed that we had to go through this kind of treatment. It is indeed beyond our comprehension how Asaba was given the rights to host an event of this calibre without putting into consideration the logistics around the connecting flights.”

“We had the option to pull out but this event is very important as it will act as a qualifier for the Inter Continental Cup in Ostrava, Czech Republic in September,” AK said.

The Kenyan team did finally arrive at Asaba, the hosting venue for the 21st CAA Senior African Athletics Championships two hours to start of the race. 

The LOC bowed to pressure to change the programme to start at 3pm Nigeria time instead of 9am. 

The Kenyan athletes said their preparations for the event have been massively affected by the chaos and have not trained nor eaten properly for three days.

“Finally, we have been provided with boarding passes, I hope this time round we are going to board to Asaba. If we don’t travel then I will have to travel back to Kenya today. I can’t be in this state any longer. It’s frustrating,” one of the affected athletes told Standard Sports.

On Tuesday, the LOC managed to take 22 Kenyan female athletes to Asaba.  However, they under instruction from Athletics Kenya not to take part in any event until the rest of the team arrived.

The advance team to Asaba, has also decried the poor conditions and low standard of the hotels the teams are booked in by LOC.

“Rooms are smelly. We are sharing beds here yet the hotel is providing only one towel in every room. I wonder how Asaba won the hosting rights in the first place. It’s bad,” the female told Standard Sports.

World 1500m silver medalist Timothy Cheruiyot posted on his twitter account: “Flight to Asaba at last. This was very a bad situation.”

Olympics 800m silver medalist Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi also aired her disappointment on her Twitter paged: “Bad situation in Nigeria before African championship in ASABA 2018. Be strong # the competition starts today.”