NAIROBI, Kenya, March 21- A full-scale Twitter war erupted between Kenyan and their Nigerian counterparts over the apparent maltreatment of Harambee Stars in Lagoa ahead of Saturday’s 2014 World Cup qualifier in Calabar.
The hash-tags #SomeonetellNigeria and #SomeonetellKenya set worldwide trends as Kenyans vented on the social media platform to castigate the reception their national team received upon arrival in Lagos.
It came as Football Kenya Federation (FKF) whose failure to adequately plan for the trip led to the farcical welcome Stars were accorded confirmed Adel Amrouche’s charges had finally landed in the port city of Calabar and had been lodged into a five-star hotel.
“The Nigeria Football Federation was instructed by FIFA Security Officer assigned for the match Mr Beckles Patrick from Barbados that they have breached the hosting arrangements.
“After his intervention the team boarded the Charter flight for the one hour 5 minutes from Lagos and Calabar. The Nigeria football authorities were on hand to receive the team and usher them in to the five-star Channel View Hotel and offered a training ground,” a communiqué from FKF declared on Thursday.
That did little to quell the anger that greeted news Stars had been compelled to lodge at a boarding school and train on primary school grounds after arriving in Lagos on Wednesday as Kenyans on Twitter collectively known as #KOT went ballistic on the site.
Churning over 100 tweets a minute at the height of the activity as they took over the site with the samples underlined below some of the gems they produced.
“@Bennsly: #SomeoneTellNigeria when all this is over please tell us (defender Taye) Taiwo’s age . Hear he is 6 years younger than his twin brother”
“@JMOxQ_: #SomeoneTellNigeria It is Only in their ‘movies’ that a 35 year old Lady will play the role of a primary school girl.” “@mayore_: #SomeOneTellNigeria We can disfigure P-Square to P-Rectangle or even P-Triangle”
”@b0unte 16m #someonetellNigeria while we r busy teaching chicken how to cross the road they are busy teaching their ghosts how to not get hit by traffic”
“@saints_vj: #SomeOneTellNigeria we use P-Spuare music in our schools to warn kids of cheap accent & poor grammar.”
@binkuki: #SomeoneTellNigeria that susan wa #Tujuane can fence the whole of super eagles team alone
“@Sewe450: #SomeoneTellNigeria we can throw stones from Kenya and break that African Cup of Nation Trophy”
“@peterserem #SomeonetellNigeria A ghost is not Supposed to look Left Right Left while crossing the road.”
“@MichKatami Some of the tweets on #SomeoneTellNigeria are hilarious but hey #KOT blame Harambee Stars mistreatment on FKF and Nyamweya…”
“@Kisenyajesse #someonetellnigeria we are disappointed by the way they’re treating Harambee. Next time they come here, come with your own airport to land” “@PapitoTito #someonetellnigeria Naija Night is officially Cancelled! No Petition!”
“@mungaipaul1 #KOT is feasting on nigeria!AND our strongholds are not yet!these are just provisional results KENYA 10-0 NIGERIA #SomeoneTellNigeria”
“@KingMwal: #SomeoneTellNigeria to treat our players the way our househelps treat their movies.”
“@Tweshie Its amazing how #KOT have gone HAM on nigerians for mistreating Harambee Stars… Hehe… Am loving the #SomeOneTellNigeria TT”
“@C_Nyakundih #SomeoneTellNigeria This is just provisional , if we start a real Tweef @Twitter will ran out of capacity”
“@MwangiJosiah17m You have to be 27 to join the Naijo U17 Football Team and 33 to join U23 team. Remember Taribo West at 18? #SomeoneTellNigeria”
“@herrbo: Nigerians hv bin baptised by fire today eee u don’t mess wit Kenyans #SomeoneTellNigeria”
The match officials designated for the game hail from Botswana with Bondo Joshua, the centre official assisted by Mepudi Meshack (first) and Momedi Monakwame (second). The fourth official is Kutlano Lesso with Sey Omar from Gambia denoted as the Match Commissioner.
FKF has appealed to the Government through the Ministry of Information to screen the match live on Saturday through national broadcaster KBC.
GrammarNazi
March 21, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Kenyan’s went ham? as in hard as a m**********r? from the Jay-Z and Kanye West song? Journalism is crashing and burning. Or is this just a personal blog?
Damilola Daramola
March 21, 2013 at 4:10 pm
Hahahaha. I paused after I saw that phrase in the article 😀
Eve Eve Eve
March 21, 2013 at 8:10 pm
#someonetellnigeria we are disappointed by the way they’re
treating Harambee. Next time they come here, come with your own airport
to land”….he killed it lmao
Fecku
March 21, 2013 at 9:59 pm
How about the blogger balance it by posting how we blew KenYAMS to smithereens? Stewpid journalist/blogger
ukweliusemwe
March 22, 2013 at 3:19 am
Who are those?
Lord Sagwe
March 22, 2013 at 5:56 am
Say, Kenyans stamping their authority in the continent….
Axeman777
March 22, 2013 at 5:59 am
Kenyans are toddlers when it comes to twitter fights against Nigerians. Just ask the Ghanaians…
U just cannot win against 170 million Nigerians. So don’t even start, cause we will finish it.
My advice to Kenyans- Have a cold bottle of beer, take 2 tokes of Hashish and CHILL-THE-FUKK-OUT!!!
pauline kariuki
March 22, 2013 at 9:59 am
I beg to differ that was maltreatment and if you people treat visitors so well, we would like to know what that was…It is unacceptable and inhuman to treat people you do not know badly, all the blessings they ought to have brought will go back with them its even written in the bible…that was really SHAMEFUL
Axeman777
March 22, 2013 at 10:24 am
I repeat, ask your Kenyan football federation what exactly happened-
NFF response-
But reacting to the allegations of made
by the Kenyans, the NFF dismissed the complaints that they were not
received on arrival at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos
on Wednesday, as pure fiction.
NFF’s spokesperson Ademola Olajire said,
“Nigerians are known to be good hosts at any time and we have not done
less for the Kenyan delegation.
“Our protocol officials were at the
Lagos airport to receive them, and took them to the Silver Grandeur
Hotel, which is not a substandard hotel as being claimed.”
Olajire said the Kenyans were very
uncooperative concerning their trip to Nigeria, “For more than one week,
we sent several mails to the Football Kenya Federation but they refused
to respond to any. The NFF was forced to be relating with them through
the Kenyan High Commission in Nigeria.
“Strangely, they arrived with attitude
and they have carried on that way. On Thursday, we flew them to Calabar
and they were received like royalty, with a performance by a cultural
troupe thrown in. Yet, they still complained about almost everything,
including questioning why the NFF took the match to Calabar.”
Kenya captain, Denis Oleich refused to talk to reporters.
_Source-Punch Newspapers
pauline kariuki
March 22, 2013 at 10:01 am
I thought so highly of Nigerians till this happened…am so disappointed.
Axeman777
March 22, 2013 at 10:42 am
NFF response to This Day Newspapers-
We played Namibia in Calabar in an
earlier match of the 2014 FIFA World Cup qualification series, and also
played against Rwanda and Liberia there. None of these teams had
anything to complain about.”
In a separate report by Kickoff, a top official of NFF, Bola Oyeyode,
disclosed that the Kenyan delegation never had the intention to disclose
its travel plans to the federation, if going by the correspondents
between the two up till the arrival of to the arrival on Wednesday.
“To start with, they were playing hide and seek about their travel
arrangements,” Oyeyode began. “They refused to communicate their arrival
date to us despite numerous letters from us to them.
“In all those communications, we copied their embassy here and FIFA and we still have the letters here.
“It was only on Monday afternoon that they wrote to us informing us they would arrive on Wednesday afternoon.
“Even their embassy was finding it hard getting information out of
them. An embassy official called Mr Tony was doing his best to help us,
but even he could not get anything out of them.”
When information eventually came, it was too limited, according to Oyeyode.
“They told us they were coming with a 25-man delegation, but didn’t
give us any names, so we could not book the connecting flight to Calabar
early.
“When it was getting late, we used our relationship with the airline to
book 25 seats with no names, only for them to arrive with a 35-man
party.
“In their letter, they never said they wanted to train in Lagos. The
arrangement was for them to come in and fly straight to Calabar. But
their flight arrived at noon, and the flight to Calabar is usually at
11am.
“At no time did we discuss anything about a chartered aircraft. Even
our own team, who are African champions, flew to Calabar on a regular
commercial flight.”
Regarding the training ground, Oyeyode said the Kenyans picked the
substandard ground on the advise of one of their ‘consultants’.
“We went out of our way to book the training pitch of the National Stadium in Surulere for them at very, very short notice.
“But they refused to go there, after they were advised by one their men
on the ground here, and they chose that primary school to train.”
The Early Air Way
May 16, 2013 at 10:47 am
That’s very bad, The Nigeria Football Federation shouldn’t have done this when they were instructed by FIFA security officer.
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