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The Confederation of Africa Football, through its Head of Securities, Dr Chris Emeruwa, has explained that due to certain handover protocols, the Moroccan policemen prevented Nigeria’s representatives, Rivers United, in the second round return leg of the CAF Champions League from taking part in a training session on Friday evening.
There has been public outrage over the perceived injustice meted to the Nigeria Professional Football League champions amd Emeruwa who was one of the contests for the Nigeria Football Federation Presidency in September said:
“The team booked a training site in Mohammed which is a city outside Casablanca. In Morocco, the police cannot provide escort services beyond their jurisdiction as such they needed time to contact the Gendarmerie so that they can hand over and allow the Gendarmerie to escort the team to their training site.
“Arranging such escort changeover requires some time and this was why the police asked the team to wait a bit as I type now the team is almost at the training site, ” Emeruwa noted.
The aggregate winner of the encounters will qualify for the group stage of the continent’s premier league.
The NPFL Champions however held 2-1 lead in the first leg,
Rivers United Football Club is a professional football club based in Port Harcourt, Rivers State that participates in the Nigerian Professional Football League, the highest level of domestic Nigerian football.
TheNewsGuru.com reports that the club was formed by the merger of Sharks F.C. and Dolphins F.C. in 2016. Their home stadium is the Yakubu Gowon Stadium, formerly Liberation Stadium in Elekahia which has a seating capacity of 30,000.
Rivers United FC has remained in the top flight since its first season.
They have been performing well in this season’s CAF Confederation Cup where they defeated a South African opponent to set up a highly anticipated matchup against Enyimba.
TheNewsGuiru.com had earlier reported that Rivers United landed in Morocco in the late hours of Thursday and had secured a facility for training for an afternoon, in preparation for the game.
However, in the process of leaving for the training session, police officers restricted the players and officials of the team from leaving the hotel citing not getting clearance from the government, despite the facility being paid for.