BY TONY UDOKA
2018 silver-medallists Nigeria will play their group B matches of the 8th African Nations Championship in Zanzibar – a Tanzanian archipelago off the coast of East Africa. It is an island of less than two million people. Nigeria is in group B with Cup holders Senegal, Congo and Sudan.
Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, the three East African nations that have been jointly awarded the hosting right for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations finals, have been mandated to host this year’s African Nations Championship as proper dress rehearsal.
The tournament will be staged 2nd – 30th August.
According to an announcement by the Confederation of African Football on Thursday, the tournament’s opening match will take place at the Benjamin Mkapa Stadium in Dar es Salaam (mainland Tanzania), while the third and fourth matches will be held at the Mandela Stadium in Kampala, Uganda.
The final match, on Saturday 30th August, will be played at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.
With the defenestration of Equatorial Guinea from the tournament following a ruling of the CAF Appeals Committee, Congo has been restored to Nigeria’s group B.
The Super Eagles B, who were also bronze-medallists in South Africa in 2014, qualified for this year’s finals after a 3-1 aggregate defeat of Ghana in their qualifying fixture in December last year.
GROUP A: Kenya, Morocco, Angola, DR Congo, Zambia (Nairobi); GROUP B: Tanzania, Madagascar, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic (Dar es Salaam); GROUP C: Uganda, Niger, Guinea, South Africa, Algeria (Kampala); GROUP D: Senegal, Congo, Sudan, Nigeria (Zanzibar).