9 July 2009
Lagos — At last, Nigeria 's junior athletes who have been at the mercy of the Italian Embassy in the country finally left the shores of Nigeria last night for Rome to be part of the World Youth Championship, which kicked off Tuesday. They left this late because the Italian Eembassy in Nigeria had originally refused them entry visas. The Embassy finally acceded to their visa requests only after higher authorities prevailed on it. The 13 athletes, who are now to take part in just the 100m medley, 200m medley (boys and girls) and the 4x100m relays were led out of Lagos by Coach Tobias Igwe. Media Officer of the Athletics Federation of Nigeria, (AFN), Mr Duro Ikhazuagbe confirmed the departure of the athletes, five days after they were scheduled to leave Lagos for the championships.
"The athletes are billed to travel to Italy this night (Wednesday night). What the federation went through in trying to get Shengen Visas for the athletes at the Italian Embassy is just unimaginable. It was quite frustrating to have junior athletes subjected to the kind of treatment the consular section meted out to them. At a point, we had given up hope of making the trip before there was intervention from higher quarters on the matter," observed the Media Officer.
The World Youth Championship kicked off Tuesday morning in Bressanone, Italy. Due to the manner in which the Italian Embassy treated the junior athletes, Nigeria with mostly A-standard runners and jumpers has already missed some key events with potentials for medals. The embassy turned down the Note-Verbal, issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and instead asked the athletes to individually bring letter of guarantee from their parents.
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