Outrage As Stadium Staff Halt Eagles Training

Friday morning training of the national team; Super Eagles was almost disrupted when officials of the National Stadium in Abuja, locked out the team from its morning training session.

 

The team had arrived the stadium at about 7:15am, but met the gates to the Practice Pitch firmly locked. For over ten minutes, Team Coordinator, Emmanuel Atta, Security Chief, ACP Gideon Akinsola and the Camp Commandant, Lt Col Rabiu Yandoto, battled to gain entrance into the training pitch to no avail.

 

When their patience ran out, the padlock to the training pitch was forced open for the team to gain entrance. It was then the outrage begun, when athletes and other visitors to the staium told Eagles officials that the gate was shut against the national team, imediately the officials sighted the bus of the team driving into the stadium arena after which they took to their heels in opposite directions. 

 

They further revealed that the officials say they were being owed backlog of salaries and therefore see the shutting out of the national team from training as an opportunity to vent their spleen.

After a frantic search, one of the Stadium supervisors, Sunday Ofele, was apprehended by the security team attached to the team and he confessed that it was the Stadium Manager, who said he should lock out the national team.

 

When the Stadium Manager, Katmwan Dungse, was confronted, he said his instruction was that entrance into the training arena should be restricted because British Embassy officials were having a function at the Velodrome inside the stadium and not for his officials to lock out the national team. 

 

The supervisor and his accomplice have since been handed over to the police for proper investigation even as Head Coach Stephen Keshi wondered why his team should be traumatised few days to an important friendly game and with qualifiers stacked infront of the team in June.

 

Meanwhile, Keshi has kept the 25 home based players guessing about those who will make the team to Lima, the Peruvian capital for Wednesday’s international friendly. 

 

Two players, Barnabas Imenger and Papa Idris, have however been ruled out due to injuries, but the 23 others will know their fate after the team’s last training session on Saturday before the team’s departure for Peru same day.

 

Only 17 players will be picked for the trip to Peru.