The Golden Eaglets yesterday made certain of a place at next year's African U-17 Championship in Morocco with a 2-0 bashing of Junior Eagles of Mali in the return leg of the last round of their qualifying campaign in Bamako.

Widely touted as the future of Nigeria football, the Coach Manu Garba's lads took charge of their return leg fixture against the Malians right from the first blast of Guinean referee Ahmed Sekou Toure's whistle, in spite of the raucous home crowd at the Stade Mamadou Konate.

Golden Eaglets' effervescent midfielder Alhassan Ibrahim, scorer of the second in the Eaglets' 2-0 home win in Calabar a fortnight ago, tormented the hosts all evening, and was inevitably involved in the first goal by big striker Success Isaac after 23 minutes.

Bernard Bulbwa wiped clean any hopes the home crowd might be nursing of a spectacular comeback by their team, when he scored the second goal 10 minutes after resumption, thus the Eaglets qualified with a 4-0 aggregate.

Morocco will be Nigeria's first outing at Africa's kindergarten party since lifting the trophy in Togo in 2007. The Golden Eaglets failed to qualify for the 2009 championship that took place in Algeria and the 2011 finals that were held in Rwanda.

With Agency Reports