Nigeria insist that their pre-World Cup friendly with DR Congo will go ahead next week despite the outbreak of Ebola in the latter country.
The Super Eagles are set to host the Leopards in their first 2018 World Cup warm-up game, with the match set for Port Harcourt next Monday [May 28].
Nigeria’s minister of Sports and Youth Development, Solomon Dalung, says the country will take strong measures to ensure their safety, but they will not be cancelling the match.
He claims that the arriving DRC players will be thoroughly screened for the disease: “[They] will come to Nigeria in a chartered flight and nobody else will be allowed to arrive the country for the match through any other means except the chartered flight,” the minister affirmed.
Dalung added, “Nigeria is going to play the friendly with DRC. I have discussed with the Federal Ministry of Health, with the World Health Organisation. We have reviewed the situation and received adequate information about it.
“So, we have agreed on major approaches. One, the DRC team is coming through a chartered flight and those coming for the match will be using that chartered flight and they would have been screened from the DRC and they will be screened here in Nigeria.
“There is going to be no any other person that is going to be admitted using any other means of transportation for the match.
“We also discovered that the Ebola outbreak is limited to a particular place and it has not escalated. So, we wouldn’t want to run the risk of setting a precedent which we will later be a victim of.”
COMMENTS