Nigeria face Burkina Faso for CHAN 2016 spot

Home-based Super Eagles will battle Burkina Faso for a place in 2016 African Nations Championship (CHAN) billed for Rwanda.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) on Sunday in Cairo, Egypt conducted the draw for the qualification series and Nigeria, Ghana and Niger were seeded in West Zone B, while Burkina Faso, Togo and Cote d’Ivoire were not.

The draw is done based on the zonal representation of the national associations affiliated to CAF.

The Northern Zone has four teams, from which two teams will qualify while West Zone A has eight teams from which two teams will qualify.

Central Zone has six teams, from which three teams will qualify while Central East will produce only two teams aside host nation Rwanda.

Southern Zone has the most number of participating teams and will produce three teams from 12 nations.

The first leg of the qualifiers comes up between October 16 and 18 while the return leg holds between October 23 and 25, 2015.

Forty-two teams are engaged in the qualifiers that will produce the 15 teams which will join the hosts for the final tournament scheduled for January 16 to February 7, 2016.

CHAN is a tournament designed exclusively for players plying their trade in their domestic leagues.

The first edition was held in 2009 in Cote d’Ivoire which was won by DR Congo.

Sudan hosted the second edition in 2011 with Tunisia as winners while Libya won the third edition in 2014 in South Africa.

Nigeria made their debut in the 2014 edition where they placed third after losing to Ghana on penalties in the semi-finals.