Stranded Ghanaian football fans still in Russia

• Posted on August 15, 2018
• by Ellsamwise King
• Comment

Several weeks after the Foreign Affairs Ministry said it was working to evacuate stranded Ghanaian football fans from Russia, some of them are yet to return.

Some thirty-two Ghanaians who went to Russia to watch the World Cup last month got stranded after their tickets were cancelled by their tour agencies.

Some twenty of them were sent to Nigeria after the Ghana Embassy in Russia managed to secure spaces for them on a Nigerian chartered flight. Citi News has learnt that the twenty who went to Abuja have since returned home.

However, the fate of the eight left back in Russia remains unknown.

In April 2018, a similar development occurred after it emerged that 50 Ghanaians had been deported from Australia after they were deemed to be “non-genuine travellers” posing as journalists for the Commonwealth Games.

According to Australian authorities, although all the affected persons had the necessary accreditation, they were not convinced the reported persons were real journalists.

Many were said to lack necessary journalistic tools like smartphones, recorders or cameras and had no idea about the sporting disciplines they were going to cover.