By TONY UBANI

Nigerian football fans and former internationals may have finally joined the call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to save Nigerian football from the grip of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), demanding a complete overhaul and the resignation of the board following a series of national-team heartbreaks, including the Super Eagles’ failure to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup — their second consecutive absence — and the Super Falcons’ recent loss of an automatic qualification spot for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil.

Until now, football legend Segun Odegbami has been a lone voice in the vanguard of those calling on the Ibrahim Gusau-led NFF board to step aside. Sports Vanguard can report that many ex-internationals, angered that the national embarrassment has now spilled over to the women’s team, have joined the call to “save our football.”

“We are demanding a total systemic clear-out and consequences at every tier of Nigerian football,” one of the former players said yesterday, pleading to remain anonymous to avoid “arrows” from what he described as desperate officials holding Nigerian football by the jugular.

Ahead of the September 27, 2026 elective congress of the NFF, scheduled to hold in Lafia, Nasarawa State, Chairman of the Advocacy for Nigeria Football Reforms Initiative, Prince Harrison Jalla, has also painted a gloomy picture of the future of Nigerian football.

Jalla’s position is in tandem with that of some aspirants who are also crying blue murder, alleging that the electoral procedure is skewed in favour of incumbent NFF President Ibrahim Musa Gusau to secure a smooth passage to a second term unopposed.

Jalla insisted that “all indicators are pointing to a gloomy picture for the future of Nigerian football, mainly due to administrative ineptitude, while the gladiators remain engrossed and fixated on the election.”

“The major crux of the election is the guidelines, which make it very difficult for other candidates to secure endorsements from across the six geopolitical zones to challenge Gusau.

“The NFF elective congress creates a skewed voting structure because [certain blocs] hold an overwhelming majority of the voting power, which critics argue marginalises key football stakeholders such as club owners, players, coaches, referees and sports writers.

“Out of the total delegates and voting structure, the 37 State FA chairmen form the primary voting bloc, making it difficult for independent candidates to win.

“This is so because of the marriage between the FA chairmen and the NFF. Most FA chairmen depend solely on the Federation for favours. Over time, during national and international engagements, the NFF uses such opportunities to reward the FA chairmen with trips and estacodes.

“They have been so compromised that no Jupiter would make them see reasons for a change. The system, therefore, heavily favours the incumbent leadership seeking re-election. That explains why they were in a hurry to pass a vote of confidence in the NFF leadership even when Nigerian football became topsy-turvy.

“As desperation has beclouded their reasoning, they have forgotten how low they have dragged Nigerian football.”

At this juncture, we take a cursory look at the catalogue of failures by Nigeria’s national teams.

Super Eagles (Senior Men): Failed to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Their campaign ended in agonising fashion in November 2025 during the CAF playoff final, when they lost 4–3 on penalties to DR Congo. This marked the second consecutive World Cup missed by the senior national team. Earlier, in January 2026, they were also eliminated from the 2025 AFCON via a penalty shootout.

Super Falcons (Senior Women): Suffered an early continental exit by losing 1–0 to Cameroon in the 2026 WAFCON quarter-finals. The defeat stripped them of an automatic ticket to the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil, forcing them into an inter-confederation playoff route. Worse still, Banyana Banyana of South Africa stopped the Super Falcons with a 2-1 defeat in Morocco, marking Nigeria’s worst outing in the history of WAFCON.

Golden Eaglets (Men’s U-17): Failed to qualify for the U-17 AFCON and subsequently missed out on three consecutive FIFA U-17 World Cups — 2023, 2025 and 2026.

Flying Eagles (Men’s U-20): Missed both the 2026 U-20 AFCON and the FIFA U-20 World Cup.

Olympic Team (Men’s U-23): Failed to qualify for the 2023 U-23 AFCON, which directly resulted in their failure to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

An official NFF apology to the government and Nigerians was met with backlash, with fans dismissing it as “too little, too late” and “one apology too many”, while demanding actual resignations.

The current frustration among fans stems from what they regard as an unprecedented catalogue of systemic failures across all tiers of Nigeria’s national teams.

Segun Odegbami said the failures had become one too many.

“If you fail to take your team to the World Cup, you find out that more often than not, they vote you out or sack you.

“That’s the measure. If you have a coach who doesn’t do well, they sack him. If you have a player who is doing badly, you remove him.”  

“These guys have not succeeded. They’re our friends; that’s the painful thing. We know ourselves. We are all in the business and, when we champion the fact that they should go, they make you an enemy.

“It’s not a personalised thing. They have failed and, if we go back to that route, we are going to fail as we have failed before,” he said.

The financial damage from missing recent major tournaments is equally devastating, with total losses estimated at between ₦150 billion and ₦300 billion in direct payouts and broader economic partnerships.

This continuous string of qualification failures has effectively choked off the federation’s primary revenue pipelines and left its local development initiatives starved of funds.

The economic wreckage breaks down across several critical areas. By failing to reach the expanded World Cup, the NFF forfeited a guaranteed baseline participation fee of $10.5 million, reportedly worth roughly ₦15.5 billion.

This single tournament loss wiped out an amount equivalent to roughly 87 per cent of the NFF’s projected annual operational budget. Had the Super Eagles advanced beyond the group stage, the rewards would have risen above $12 million, while reaching the quarter-finals could have yielded up to $20 million in performance-related payments.

Early exits by the Super Falcons and the qualification failures of the youth teams — U-17, U-20 and U-23 — mean the NFF has also missed out on vital developmental subsidies and travel grants normally provided by continental governing bodies.

Corporate organisations and major sports betting companies are scaling back their sponsorship valuations. Without global television exposure, the NFF cannot command premium rates for brand placement.

The federation also misses out on potential revenue from global jersey sales, training gear and licensed supporter memorabilia that normally spike around major tournaments.

By missing out on tournament participation, Nigeria also loses leverage to draw heavily from FIFA’s financial programmes aimed at upgrading domestic training academies and pitches.

Consecutive missed World Cups have further lowered the market value of the national team brand, making future broadcast and marketing rights significantly harder to sell at a premium.