Nigeria’s home-based national team, Super Eagles B, will play their Group B matches of the Eighth African Nations Championship in Zanzibar – a Tanzanian archipelago off the coast of East Africa. It is an island of less than two million people. Nigeria is in Group B with Cup holders Senegal, Congo and Sudan.

Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, the three East African nations that have been jointly awarded the hosting right for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations finals, have been mandated to host this year’s African Nations Championship as proper dress rehearsal.

The tournament will be staged from August 2 to 30. According to an announcement by the Confederation of African Football (CAF), yesterday, the tournament’s opening match will hold at the Benjamin Mkapa Stadium, in Dar es Salaam (mainland Tanzania), while the third and fourth matches will hold at the Mandela Stadium in Kampala, Uganda.

The final match, on August 30, will be played at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. With the defenestration of Equatorial Guinea from the tournament following a ruling of the CAF Appeals Committee, Congo has been restored to Nigeria’s Group B.

The 2018 silver-medallists, Nigeria, who were also bronze-medallists in South Africa in 2014, qualified for this year’s finals after a 3-1 aggregate defeat of Ghana in their qualifying fixture in December last year.

According to the draws, Group A comprises Kenya, Morocco, Angola, DR Congo, and Zambia, who will play in Nairobi, Kenya; Group B has Tanzania, Madagascar, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Central African Republic (games in Dar es Salaam), while Group C, comprising Uganda, Niger, Guinea, South Africa and Algeria, will play in Kampala.

Nigeria’s Group D, which also has Senegal, Congo and Sudan, will play in Zanzibar.