Sports

CAF Reassures Guinea Of AFCON 2025 Hosting Rights

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has disclosed that the hosting right of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations will not be taken away from Guinea.

Guinea has been in political turmoil and as such expectations were rife that the country could lose the rights to host the rest of the continent.

However following the awarding of the rights in 2014 under the Presidency of Ahmad Ahmad.

Guinea accepted the honour of hosting the tournament in 2025 after it was initially taken away from them in 2023 and handed over to Cote d’Ivoire with President Alpha Condé later accepting the two-year delay.

“The host for the 2025 tournament (AFCON) remain Guinea and that has not changed,” a top CAF official told the BBC Sports Africa.

“We’ve not discussed anything about a replacement or received any communication from Guinea about the inability to host. At this moment, everything is on track for Guinea to host and there is no reason to suggest otherwise.”

This assertion came as the Nigeria Football Federation president Amaju Pinnick had suggested that Nigeria could offer to replace Guinea as hosts.

In 2014, CAF awarded Nations Cup hosting rights to Cameroon (2019), Ivory Coast (2021) and Guinea (2023) but Egypt took the place of Cameroon as the latter’s facilities and inclement weather conditions necessitated the favour to Egypt.

Izuchukwu Okosi

Izuchukwu Okosi is a Nigerian sports and entertainment journalist with two decades of experience in the media industry having begun his media journey in 2002 as an intern at Mundial Sports International (MSI) and Africa Independent Television (AIT), owners of Daar Communications Plc. In October 2004, Okosi joined Complete Communications Limited, publishers of Complete Sports newspaper and Complete Football magazine as a reporter and later script writer for the Complete Sports studio. He worked there for 13 years until October 2017. Okosi also worked various times as Correspondent, Content creator and Editor at Sports Market International Magazine, Opera News, All Nigeria Soccer Media and Iconic Media Watch. He also undertook freelance writing gigs for some local and international organizations. Okosi is a member of the Actors Guild of Nigeria (AGN), Association of Movie Producers (AMP), Association of Voiceover Artistes of Nigeria (AVOA), Sports Writers Association of Nigeria (SWAN) and Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). He has been part of cast in some Nollywood movies and radio dramas including Blood Money 2, Scores To Settle, Dead End 2, Another Campus Tale and Battle Line. Aside mainstream media and the entertainment industry, he has interests in scouting/unearthing of talents in the sports and creative sectors, exports business and property development.