When Segun Odegbami, who captained Nigeria to its first Africa Cup of Nations title in 1980, calls the current moment the “worst time” in the country’s football history, he’s not just talking about results on the pitch. Both the Super Eagles and Super Falcons failed to qualify for their respective 2026 and 2027 World Cups — the Falcons missing the tournament for the first time since it began in 1991 — but the administrative collapse behind those failures runs deeper than a losing streak.
Nigeria Football Federation president Ibrahim Musa Gusau resigned on 27 August, alongside general secretary Mohammed Sanusi and several executive committee members, roughly a month before the federation’s scheduled elective congress. Gusau’s resignation came amid a Department of State Services investigation into the alleged misuse of ₦17 billion (about $12.7m) in federal funds released in 2024 to clear a backlog of unpaid allowances owed to national team players and officials. Gusau defended his record at the time, attributing the federation’s financial strain to the naira’s volatility rather than mismanagement, and pointed to a new sponsorship deal with Adidas worth $4.5m annually as evidence of progress.
President Bola Tinubu ordered a “comprehensive reform” of Nigerian football the same day, directing the National Sports Commission to work with football stakeholders on what he called a response to “longstanding weaknesses in governance, administration, stakeholder representation, development pathways, domestic competitions and accountability.” FIFA formally accepted the resignations at a meeting in Zurich on 1 September, where it agreed with the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and Nigerian officials to begin drafting a reform roadmap rather than immediately impose a normalisation committee — the kind of external takeover FIFA has used elsewhere when a federation’s own leadership structure breaks down. The NFF’s scheduled 27 September elections have since been suspended pending that process.
Odegbami, who scored 23 goals in 47 Nigeria appearances and remains one of the country’s most decorated players, argues the rot predates this year’s failures by decades. He traces it to a loss of what he calls “first XI administrators” since the mid-1990s and points to Nigeria’s crumbling football infrastructure as proof — stadiums in Lagos, Ibadan, Kaduna and Calabar that hosted continental finals in his own playing days now sit in disrepair, while the Super Eagles play home games in Uyo, a stadium he says doesn’t match what the country had decades earlier.
The contrast with the rest of the continent isn’t flattering. Senegal hosts next month’s Youth Olympic Games, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia will co-host next year’s men’s Cricket World Cup, Kenya has the 2029 World Athletics Championship, and Morocco is preparing to co-host the 2030 FIFA World Cup with Spain and Portugal. Nigeria, meanwhile, is trying to rebuild a football federation from the ground up while its senior men’s team opens 2027 Afcon qualifying against Madagascar without Victor Osimhen, ruled out through injury.
Whether Tinubu’s reform mandate produces the structural change sports journalists like Fisayo Dairo are calling for — proper development pathways, grassroots investment, governance that includes corporate stakeholders — will likely determine whether this moment becomes a genuine turning point or simply another entry in the list of crises Nigerian football has weathered since the 1990s.
