{"id":4971,"date":"2013-10-20T10:07:15","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T14:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/?p=4971"},"modified":"2013-10-20T11:17:27","modified_gmt":"2013-10-20T15:17:27","slug":"ethiopia-ff-downplay-nigerian-team-bus-attack-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/4971","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia Football Federation downplays Nigerian team bus attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Victor<\/a>Following the controversial football game between Ethiopia and Nigeria last Sunday, the Nigerian team has officially filed a complaint against Ethiopian fans for physically attacking their team bus and injuring one of their midfield players, Nosa Igiebor.<\/p>\n

The incident was reported by the Nigerian Football Federation to FIFA after the Super Eagles and the Walya Antelopes played the first leg of their World Cup qualifier playoff.<\/p>\n

The Ethiopian Football Federation had earlier promised to investigate the incident and take proper disciplinary actions if the allegations were found to be true.<\/p>\n

EFF president Juinedin Basha spoke recently about the claims. He said investigators did not find any evidence to corroborate the allegations.<\/p>\n

“Of course the stadium was full of angry fans, who were disappointed by the referee’s decision, especially after he ruled out the first goal,” Basha told BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

The Walya Antelopes thought they had opened the scoring after 24 minutes with Saladin Said\u2019s performance, only for Godfrey Oboabona to clear the ball off the line.<\/p>\n

The NFF said in a press statement that fans threw stones at the team bus after the match, shattering the rear window of the bus.<\/p>\n

“Igiebor was the unlucky one as the stone slashed his right palm leading to profuse bleeding that was immediately attended to by [the] team doctor, Ibrahim Gyaran,” said Ben Alaiya, the Super Eagles press officer.<\/p>\n

Despite the Walya Antelopes fans’ disappointment, Basha said there was no evidence to support the claims made by the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF).<\/p>\n

The EFF president said, “There was no attack. There was no one injured – either players or individuals from the Nigerian team on Sunday. This is what we found out from our investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

“We have checked everything. We’ve got nothing that shows that a player or any other individual was injured by fans.<\/p>\n

“The Ethiopian people are known to be respectful to any African from every corner. This is our culture, this is our history and the Nigerians are our African brothers.”<\/p>\n

The Super Eagles\u00a0won the match 2-1,\u00a0and are brimming with confidence in anticipation of the second leg of the playoff in Nigeria.<\/p>\n

The Walya Antelopes will make their way to Calabar on 16 November for the return leg of the play-off, where the winners will progress to the World Cup finals in Brazil.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following the controversial football game between Ethiopia and Nigeria last Sunday, the Nigerian team has officially filed a complaint against Ethiopian fans for physically attacking their team bus and injuring one of their midfield players, Nosa Igiebor. The incident was…<\/span> Read more ›<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4971"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}