Patrice Motsepe was speaking in a press conference on Tuesday, October 22 where he condemned what happened to the Super Eagles of Nigeria at the Libya airport ahead of the AFCON 2025 qualifying match.
Nigeria were scheduled to play against Libya in the return leg of the clash last week Tuesday, October 15, 2024, but opted not to play the game after they were held hostage for over 20 hours at the airport.
The team’s flight to Benghazi, where the match was supposed to take place, was diverted to the small airport away from Benghazi just as the pilot was completing his approach to the Benghazi Airport. Nigerian later abandoned the match and flew back to Abuja.
Motsepe condemned the incident but insisted that he would not speak on the situation until the body reaches a final decision.
“We should have zero tolerance. When there was this problem of the Nigerian national team in Libya, I will not comment on that because there is a proper investigation.
But I want to emphasise a principle that we will not tolerate. This is something that has been going on for quite some time. Forget about the Libya vs Nigeria situation; forget about that; appropriate action will be taken.
I have heard too many stories about a football club or national team that goes to a country. You spend hours at the airport, and they ask you about documents that don’t exist
Apparently, during COVID, they would look at the best players and then say those ten players have got COVID.
But it is this lack of sportsmanship that has existed, and we haven’t taken effective action. We are reviewing those laws, and we want to emphasise sportsmanship.”
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