WAFCON 2024 was my first time on a flight and my first time covering sports outside Nigeria. Back then, it already felt like I had experienced something significant. But nothing truly prepares you for your first World Cup assignment in Canada.
This one felt different, heavier, bigger, and slightly unreal in a way I still struggle to fully explain. Sports really do take people places, and this time it carried me across the Atlantic, from Africa to North America, thanks to www.aclsports.com.
Of course, my journey on Sunday began the way Nigeria often does this season, with rain. Not the kind that cancels plans, but the kind that slows everything down just enough to test patience. The ride to the airport took longer than expected because it was difficult to get a booking in the downpour. By the time I finally got moving, I already knew this journey wasn’t going to behave normally.
And it didn’t.
At Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, I met our Chief Football Writer, Fisayo Dairo, for the first time, and we immediately slipped into airport survival mode. My check-in luggage was 2kg over the limit.
If you’ve ever tried to negotiate with a suitcase at an airport, you know this is where dignity quietly steps aside for a full life audit. Bags were opened. Shoes came out. Items were reassigned like tactical substitutions in extra time. If you saw someone holding sneakers in a plastic bag at the airport, that was me.
Then came the airline officials, flexing authority over documents and holding me up for over 30 minutes. After that, manual check-in followed because, well… Nigeria happened. Eventually, I got my boarding pass.
Just like that, for the second time in my life, I was on a plane, but this time leaving Africa to cover a World Cup. That sentence still hasn’t fully settled in my head.
Airplane breakfast still hasn’t won me over, but travel is also about experience, so I tried anyway. We stopped over in Casablanca, a city that already feels familiar through football memories, especially with the Super Falcons during their historic WAFCON 2024 run.
The stop was brief, but Morocco has a calm presence even in transit. There’s something about it you notice immediately, even inside an airport terminal.
Then, in one of those unexpected travel moments, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo walked through the terminal while we waited for our connecting flight. No announcement, no spectacle, just life moving.
The long flight to Canada somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, it hit me: I was leaving Africa behind, bound for North America on a World Cup assignment. I tried to sleep, failed repeatedly, and spent most of the journey switching between movies, food, and short restless naps that never quite became rest.
While waiting for my luggage in Canada, I struck up a conversation with another passenger who asked where I was from. When I told him I was from Nigeria, his face lit up immediately.
“Oh, they play good football,” he said.
He mentioned the Super Eagles and legends like the late Rashidi Yekini and Jay-Jay Okocha. It also made me think about the contrast in travel systems and how differently things move here compared to back home.
After collecting my bags, I stepped outside and saw FIFA World Cup volunteers at the exit, the first real sign I had arrived. Ride booked, I headed to rest, caught between exhaustion and excitement, still trying to process how quickly everything had shifted.
Because beyond football and coverage, there is another layer to this journey…. but you have to come back for the next story to fully understand.
