NFF board under fire over Super Eagles failures

The Nigerian Football Federation board, led by Ibrahim Gusau, faces mounting calls to resign following a string of catastrophic failures in Nigerian football. Veteran sports administrator and former Sokoto State FA Chairman Danladi Bako PhD, OON — who has attended six FIFA World Cups, three Olympics, and 12 Africa Cup of Nations tournaments — argues that the board's continued tenure is an affront to Nigeria's 200 million football fans.

Nigeria have now missed two consecutive FIFA World Cup cycles, failing to qualify for both the 2022 and 2026 editions. The exclusion is rendered more painful, Bako notes, by the fact that nations such as Cape Verde — with a population of under one million — and Curacao qualified, even as FIFA expanded CAF's allocation to 10 slots.

"It is self-serving, immoral, and insensitive to throw the emotions of 200 million football-loving Nigerian fans into a topsy-turvy clanger," Bako wrote.

Super Falcons exit adds to the misery

The Super Falcons' quarter-final defeat to South Africa at the WAFCON tournament in Morocco compounded the misery, eliminating Nigeria from contention for the Women's World Cup in Brazil next year. Bako described the manner of the Super Falcons' elimination as embarrassing, arguing the team had scraped through the tournament without conviction before finally coming undone.

He also pointed to the N12 billion released by President Tinubu ahead of the last Africa Cup of Nations in Côte d'Ivoire, a campaign that ended without silverware. Bako questioned whether the National Sports Commission and the NFF have properly accounted for those funds.

NFF statutes and electoral process need reform

At the heart of the problem, Bako argues, is a deeply flawed governance structure. He contends that FIFA prize money and qualification payments — running into hundreds of thousands of dollars per World Cup cycle — have made the NFF presidency a financially attractive prize, fuelling fierce internal competition rather than genuine footballing ambition.

He called for a comprehensive rewrite of the NFF statutes and an overhaul of the electoral process, including transferring voting rights to Premier League clubs rather than State Association chairmen, whom he characterised largely as political appointees with little football expertise.

The threat of a FIFA ban, which NFF leadership has historically invoked to resist government scrutiny, is "outdated and totally false," Bako insists. He noted that Nigeria have effectively banned themselves from the last two World Cups through poor leadership, with no FIFA intervention required.

Calls for stronger leadership

Bako lamented that accomplished football figures such as Daniel Amokachi, Nwankwo Kanu, and Segun Odegbami remain bystanders while the federation is run by those he views as unqualified administrators. He argued that the NFF presidency demands someone with deep technical knowledge, broad international connections, and the business acumen needed to attract and manage significant funding.

Drawing a parallel with the Italian Football Federation, whose board resigned after failing to qualify for the 2026 World Cup, Bako urged President Tinubu to intervene — suggesting that the President could quietly direct Shehu Dikko to ask Gusau and his board to step aside, given what Bako described as their inability to take moral responsibility for Nigeria's footballing decline.