Ikechukwu Uche and Aaron Samuel both scored to keep Nigeria’s hopes of Africa Cup of Nations qualification alive in a morale-boosting 2-0 win over Congo on Saturday.<\/p>\n
A tight first half yielded few clear-cut chances, but the visitors made the breakthrough just before the hour mark when Emmanuel Emenike was brought down inside the box and Uche kept his cool from the spot.<\/p>\n
Thievy Bifouma missed a penalty for the hosts five minutes later and Samuel wrapped up the points with a tidy finish\u00a0in the last minute, with angry home fans causing a slight delay when they threw missiles onto the pitch.<\/p>\n
The result moves Nigeria into second place, with\u00a0goal difference pushing them ahead of Congo heading into the final round of games in Group A.<\/p>\n
Congo\u00a0started brightly and saw Bifouma spurn two presentable chances inside the opening 10 minutes, while\u00a0Fode\u00a0Dore\u00a0also skewed wide when well placed seven minutes before half-time.<\/p>\n
The visitors suffered an early blow after the interval when Hope Akpan went off injured, but they broke the deadlock soon after.<\/p>\n
Chancel Massa\u00a0fouled Emenike\u00a0in the box and Uche\u00a0beat the goalkeeper with a low finish into the bottom-left corner from 12 yards.<\/p>\n
Congo were given a chance to level the scores with a penalty of their own after Godfrey Oboabona was adjudged to have handled a Prince Oniangue shot.<\/p>\n
Bifouma stepped up to take the kick, but Vincent\u00a0Enyeama guessed correctly and pushed the striker’s effort away to ensure Nigeria’s lead remained intact.<\/p>\n
After Uche had wasted two chances to double Nigeria’s lead, the hosts saw efforts from Francis N’Ganga and Delvin Ndinga go close, the latter denied by a great save from Enyeama<\/p>\n
A swift counter-attack following that save saw Nigeria secure their victory, substitute Samuel curling a left-footed effort beyond Massa to give Keshi a winning return.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: Goal.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ikechukwu Uche and Aaron Samuel both scored to keep Nigeria’s hopes of Africa Cup of Nations qualification alive in a morale-boosting 2-0 win over Congo on Saturday. A tight first half yielded few clear-cut chances, but the visitors made the breakthrough just before the hour mark when Emmanuel Emenike was brought down inside the box […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":65506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29,3],"class_list":["post-65505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-mahamudu-bawumia","tag-ghana-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}