Brazil 2014: Supporters club working to ensure return of seized food items

The Secretary-General of the Nigeria Football Supporters Club, Samuel Ikpea, has vowed that the club would ensure the recovery of its members’ food items seized by Brazilian Immigration officials.
Brazilian Immigration officials at the Sao Paulo International Airport had on Monday seized Nigerian food items carried by members of the NFSC to Brazil for the 2014 World Cup.
The food items included large quantity of garri, semovita, vegetable oil, fried meat and fish and food seasoning and spices.
Brazilian Immigration officials at the airport insisted that bringing in food items without official notice was prohibited in the country.
However, Ikpea said the club’s leadership has stepped up action towards ensuring the food items were returned to their members.
“We are going to be here for almost a month and we need our local food to sustain members of the club who are here to cheer the national team,” he said.
The club’s President-General, Rafiu Oladipo, had contacted Nigeria’s Ambassador in Brazil to assist towards the possible recovery of the seized food items.
One member of the club who spoke on condition of anonymity claimed she spent over N50,000 in buying and preserving the food items.
She said: “It has always been our practice to travel abroad in support of the national teams with our national food items.
“I hope we are able to recover these food items because many of them were already paid for by some members on the trip.”
Some of the members of the club, who mostly love eating Nigerian food, said that staying in Brazil would remain difficult for them without Nigerian food.
They said they would have to start eating foreign foods, which they were not used to, if they were going to survive the situation.
Members of the Nigerian supporters club are in Brazil to cheer the Super Eagles who are in Group F at the 2014 World Cup finals.
It has always been the practice of the club’s members to travel with Nigerian food items to every international football competition they were attending.