13th October, 2011
Nigerian players and their officials have expressed their disappointment over their inability to be at the Scrabble World Championship in Poland due to the refusal of the Polish embassy to issue them entry visas.
Team Nigeria’s hope of participating in this year’s scrabble championship in Warsaw, Poland, was dashed when the Polish Embassy in Nigeria refused to grant entry visas to the team for the trip to Poland, citing lateness in filing of visa application by officials of the Nigeria Scrabble Federation, NSF.
Speaking with P.M.Sports on the development, one of the players, Moshood Sanni said: “I cannot say how deeply we the players are disappointed by the action of the Polish Embassy because we trained hard for the world tourney only to learn at the last minute that we would not be attending.â€
General Secretary of the federation, James Eakyns told P.M.Sports that they had approached the Polish Embassy for visas since 19 September but the embassy officials insisted that they should forward their application online.
“It is a national disappointment that Nigeria is not part of the championship, having prepared extensively for the tourney. We have committed a lot of resources to prepare for the competition. All this has been rendered useless by the Polish embassy,†he said.
“We did apply online and brought along a ‘NOTE VERBALE’ from the government to the Embassy to issue us visas but they refused to honour it. They hid themselves in their office and communicated with us via emails,†NSF president, Engineer Toke Aka said.
—Bamidele Olowosagba