The arrival of Racing Genk of Belgium striker, Paul Ebere Onuachu back at his base, following several days of delay in Nigeria, due to shut airports, on account of the coronavirus pandemic, has left his teammates, club officials and fans in sheer ecstasy, megasportsarena.com reports.
The 26-year-old former FC Midtjylland of Denmark leggy striker left Belgium for Nigeria in May, when he travelled aboard a charted flight with Imoh Ezekiel and Victor Osimhen, in order to attend the burial of the latter’s father in Lagos, but they were all stranded afterwards, as a prolonged closure of airports prevented them from returning to their respective bases.
Consequently, while Onuachu’s teammates returned for pre-season training, the towering star was stuck in Lagos, after a specially chartered flight that was meant to take him and some other players from a couple of Belgian clubs faced several hitches.
A report by Het Nieuwsblad revealed that the flight scheduled to take Onuachu back to Belgium was billed to fly out of Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire and would have been used by some counterparts from Club Brugge and KAA Gent to return to their bases as well, but it could not move because the airports remained closed down due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Efforts by Onuachu to get an ideal alternative in Nigeria also failed to materialize, as the earlier earmarked reopening of all airports for international flights the previous Sunday had been shifted till further notice, following a bureaucratic mistake that allowed Nigerian hip-hop artiste, Naira Marley fly to Abuja for a concert, thereby leaving the Genk youngster stranded in Lagos.
However, relief has now come the way of Onuachu, who joined Genk from Midtjylland last summer, and has scored 10 goals plus two assists for the club this season, as he returned to Belgium on Monday, after taking a flight from Lagos to Paris in France.
Onuachu’s club delightfully announced the return of the towering striker, who then went for a medical check at the sports center and quickly made himself available for pre-season training in order to hit the ground running and meet up with their immediate plans for the team.
Genk gleefully stated: “Paul Onuachu and Eboue Kouassi are back in Genk after a stay in their home country – Nigeria and Ivory Coast respectively. Flying back from the African continent to Europe in corona times proved far from obvious. Onuachu trained until mid-May and then left for Nigeria. He returned to Genk via Paris on the night from Friday to Saturday.”
