Golden Eaglets’ captain, Kelechi Nwakali and defender Lukman Halilu have been recounting their ordeal in the hands of the Gabonese, saying the nasty experience would only emboldened them for the second leg cracker.
The duo who kept a separate diary of events during their laborious
journey from Lagos to Libreville last week, noted the unsporting conduct of their hosts but are hopeful their counterparts from Gabon would meet their Waterloo on the pitch in Calabar.
Said Halilu: “The journey from Lagos to Libreville was stressful and we were not happy the way we were treated in Lome when we were ordered out of the flight even after checking in and collected our boarding pass,
“because we were told the Gabonese did not want us to come for the match”.
“Even on getting to Libreville, we were warned not to even eat their food because of their hostile nature, which we later saw on match day.
“The match never came in our favour to the extent that we were robbed because of bad officiating by the referee, and we are equally shocked when the fans started shouting at us and calling us ‘Ebola Nigeria! Ebola Nigeria!!’
“All through our stay in Libreville, I usually remember what coach Emmnuel Amuneke had been telling us right from the screening that ‘this journey is not going to be easy’, and our experiences in Libreville gave us an idea about what he meant”.
Yet, Nwakali believes the Golden Eaglets have put the nightmarish experience behind them as they turn attention to the second leg.
“We are going to show Gabon that Nigeria is U-17 defending champions, and not ‘Ebola Nigeria’, as they called us in Libreville”, Nwakali said in his usual joking manner.