As some Nigerians continue to lament over the alleged bad treatment given to players and officials of the Super Eagles in Libya, former chairman of Gombe United Football Club, Shuiabu Ahmed Gara-Gombe has described as ‘most senseless’ the decision by the team to boycott the second leg of their AFCON qualifiers against the Mediterranean Knights.

The Super Eagles returned to Nigeria on Monday evening following their ordeal at the Al Abraq airport in Libya, where they were ‘detained’ for about 12 hours after their plane was diverted from its original destination.

Gara-Gombe told journalists that the Super Eagles shouldn’t have boycotted the match saying: “The ‘most senseless’ thing our Super Eagles did was returning to Nigeria without playing the match against Libya. Whoever advised the team to do so made a big mistake because there is no football rule that suggest that if you are badly treated at the airport you should boycott the match.

“The best thing the Super Eagles should have done was to take their complaint to the Match Commissioner, stay and play the match. Whichever result they get inside the pitch, Nigerians back home will accept it.

“I have read the comments and also listened to voices of some people on the issue. Some of them don’t know anything about rules governing football. We are talking about an international football match, not the Nigeria league.

In the first place, CAF appointed a Match Commissioner for the game, and it is his duty to report back to CAF what transpired in Libya. Did the NFF get in touch with the Match Commissioner while the ‘bad treatment’ was going on inside Libya airport for 12 hours? And did the Match Commissioner give the Super Eagles the permission to boycott the match?

“Again, did the ‘bad treatment’ in any way reduce the number of Super Eagles players for the match? If we fail to tell ourselves the bitter truth about what just happened, a time will come when some of our clubs on continental assignment will just fly to nearby Benin Republic or Togo and come back to say they were badly treated at the airport and therefore refuse to play.

We must play by the rules of the game and put aside unnecessary sentiments,” Gara-Gombe stated.