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Breaking! African Athletics Championships in trouble again as Nigeria withdraw as hosts

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Nigeria has made a dramatic U-turn over the hosting of the troubled African Athletics Championships.

The championships, originally to hold in Algeria but suffered three-time postponements before Nigeria stepped in last month to rescue the event and fixed June 23 to 27 for it.

But now, the Nigerian authorities have now said the championships cannot be hosted as planned  due to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

This latest decision leaves the future of the athletics showpiece in doubt for this year despite Algeria insisting it is still willing to host the event later this year, coronavirus permitting.

The Confederation of African Athletics had hoped that with Nigeria hosting the championships it would give athletes the chance to achieve qualifying standards for the Tokyo Olympics ahead of the 29 June deadline.

It is yet another problem to hit the biennial event which should have taken place in 2020 before being postponed by a year due to Covid-19.

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The plan was then to hold the championships in the Algerian city of Oran between the 1st and 5th June 2021 before it was then moved to Algiers and set to take place 22-26 June.

Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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