When Anezi Okoro wrote his comedic novel, One Week, One Trouble, about a boy who got into trouble in school almost every week, he never knew it would fit into the character of the Nigeria Football Federation, especially the current one headed by Ibrahim Musa Gusau. 

Like the proverbial tortoise that is always in the news for some mischievous behaviours, the Gusau-led Board of the NFF is always in the news for actions tied to incompetence. From their first day in office till this day, they have not shown they have the capacity to turn around the fortunes of the country’s football. They have shown over the years that they are competition driven and have no idea on how to develop the country’s football. 

No wonder Gusau once boasted that they always qualified for competitions, be it at regional, continental or world levels. When the Super Falcons qualified to play the last Women’s African Cup of Nations tagged WAFCON, the NFF code-named it Mission X, because the team were going for their 10th title, the only team in the continent with such a record. It didn’t bother them that the same team these days struggled to beat smaller African countries they beat by as much as four or five goals in the past. Other countries are now standing toe to toe with Nigeria, not even Ghana and Cameroon that gave them a run for their money. 

Moroccans in particular have developed their women’s football so much so that they eliminated Nigeria in the penultimate WAFCON decided on their ground. All the countries that have caught up with Nigeria in women’s football are able to do so because they now have functional leagues with sponsors. The Nigeria Women Football League, NFWL hasn’t been able to attract a permanent sponsor despite the prowess of the country’s women’s football teams. The various national teams, including the almighty Super Eagles have no sponsor. What we see are some companies always identifying with the team whenever they qualify for either the African Nations Cup, AFCON or the FIFA World Cup. 

Talking about the FIFA World Cup, the race to qualify for the 2026 edition has been the worst since 1994 when the team qualified for their first World Cup. In the past, the country qualified with a game or two to spare or did so on the last day of the qualifiers. Today, the Super Eagles are going through the toughest route. They must first beat Gabon in the semi finals of the African play-offs scheduled for Morocco on November 13 and then beat the winner of the second semi finals between Cameroon and DR Congo on November 16, 2025. 

These other teams were better than the Super Eagles in the ranking of the best losers in the 10 qualifying matches from where the continent’s nine automatic representatives emerged. If they survive these teams, they will then proceed to play in the second play-offs with teams from other continents except Europe. The story is not palatable with other cadres of the country’s football. The various teams, the Golden Eaglets and the Flying Eagles who used to be invincible in the continent are now vulnerable to other African countries. The Golden Eaglets who have won the most titles at the U-17 FIFA World Cup, five in total, couldn’t even qualify for the African U-17 Nations Cup. The Flying Eagles who are equally the most successful team on the continent, struggled in the last FIFA U-20 World Cup before losing scandalously to perennial foes, Argentina by 4-0. 

Shockingly, the same Argentina got to the final but got whipped 2-0 by a fellow African team, Morocco, who became the second African team after Ghana to win the competition. Meanwhile the Flying Eagles reached the final twice before Morocco and Ghana in 1989 and 2005 but lost it. Yet the NFF has not bothered to go back to the proverbial drawing board to identify the problem in order to get it right. The area they should even be ashamed of but haven’t uttered a word about was the recent humiliation of the country’s league champions, Remo Stars by South Africa’s champions, Mamelodi Sundowns on Nigerian soil. 

Mamelodi Sundowns have won the CAF Champions League once but not before Enyimba Football Club of Aba. They have remained consistent in the continent because South Africa has a viable league with a sponsor. South Africa’s Premier Soccer League, PSL has good welfare package for players. They earn much more than their Nigerian counterparts. The prize money for the winners of the Nigerian league, the NPFL is pitiable when compared to what the champions of South Africa earn. Talking about leagues, a major ingredient for a successful league is officiating. In football, after the players, the next most important people in the system are the referees, before the administrators. 

Both CAF and FIFA make this very clear and hence have programmes for their constant training and retraining. The NFF is not showing enough commitment in the welfare or training of Nigerian referees and this may be the reason why they are not considered good enough by either CAF or FIFA. Only two days ago, CAF released the list of 101 officials for a course preparatory to the next AFCON in Morocco. Out of this number, referees are 33, video match officials are 11, instructors are 44, CAF staff are five, one VAR technician and seven committee members. Shockingly no Nigerian is on the list of all the categories listed above, prompting me to ask what is the problem with Nigerian football? Why do we always have unpalatable stories about football in the country? The NFF led by Gusau has an explanation to give Nigerians.