{"id":65537,"date":"2025-05-10T04:53:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T04:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=65537"},"modified":"2025-05-10T04:53:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T04:53:08","slug":"nigeria-pulls-out-of-world-relays-after-visa-snub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/05\/10\/nigeria-pulls-out-of-world-relays-after-visa-snub\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria Pulls Out of World Relays After Visa Snub"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Njoku Chijioke<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Nigeria has officially withdrawn from the 2025 World Relays in Guangzhou, China, following visa delays that grounded its 17 member athletics team.<\/p>\n<p>Despite beginning the application process as early as February, the Athletics Federation of Nigeria said athletes were hit by last minute approvals, unclear requirements, and inconsistent documentation from Chinese authorities.<\/p>\n<p>The federation described the outcome as both financially damaging and emotionally draining for the athletes, who missed a crucial opportunity to qualify for global competitions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a huge setback. Our team was ready, but the process was deliberately frustrating,\u201d the AFN said, decrying what it called unfair treatment and lack of transparency.<\/p>\n<p>The team had been billed to compete in four events before being forced to pull out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Njoku Chijioke Nigeria has officially withdrawn from the 2025 World Relays in Guangzhou, China, following visa delays that grounded its 17 member athletics team. Despite beginning the application process as early as February, the Athletics Federation of Nigeria said athletes were hit by last minute approvals, unclear requirements, and inconsistent documentation from Chinese authorities. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":65538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-65537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65539,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65537\/revisions\/65539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}