The Honourable Minister of Sports Development, Senator John Owan Enoh is committed to making sure that arrangement for Chartered Flights to convey athletes and officials to and fro Accra to Nigeria at the on-going 13th African Games in Accra, Ghana are properly organized and this is in an effort to ensure a smooth and hitch-free participation of Team Nigeria at the games.
The movements to the Games were scheduled in 2 batches (Batch 1 on 5th March, 2024) and (Batch 2 on 11th March, 2024) respectively. Part of the arrangement was for Air Peace to return with some of the athletes with their officials who must have completed their events, after airlifting the 2nd batch to Accra.
According to the plan, the flight of 11th March 2024 was scheduled to originate from Lagos International Airport (Terminal 2) at exactly 7:00pm, to transit Abuja for the remaining passengers and then departure from Abuja International Airport directly to Accra at 9:00pm.
The same flight was expected to depart Accra at 11:00pm to arrive Lagos at 1:00am the following day.
Since the contingent will be arriving midnight, the Ministry therefore made an arrangement for hotel rooms in Lagos, as well as buses to convey the athletes and officials from the MM International Airport to the transit hotel, where the athletes were expected to sleep for a day before proceeding to their various destinations.
Despite the delay in the arrival of the Chartered flight from Accra into Lagos, which was expected at 1:00am, the flight eventually landed at 5:10am, the Officials of the Ministry were still on ground with buses waiting to convey the athletes to their hotel in Lagos. These arrangements were smoothly made as the athletes were flown back to Abuja safely from Lagos.
Kehinde Ajayi
Director Press & Public Relations Unit
FMSD
