Discarding The National Football Failures (NFF)

We said on this page recently that heads must roll at the Nigeria Football Federation, and heads have rolled. The NFF President, Alhaji Ibrahim Musa Gusau, and the General Secretary, Dr Mohammed Sanusi, has  resigned and the rest of the Executive Committee followed them out the door within hours.

Gusau’s departure came just 34 days short of completing the four-year term he won at the Annual General Assembly in Benin City in September 2022, and he framed his exit as a deliberate act rather than a forced one, telling reporters at the NFF Secretariat that his resignation was meant “to give way to a comprehensive and orderly reform process aimed at addressing the longstanding institutional, governance and developmental challenges confronting Nigerian football.” Whether the decision was as voluntary as that framing suggests matters less than what happens next, and this newspaper intends to hold Nigerian football’s new custodians to exactly that standard.

What makes this moment different from the pattern of federation reshuffles Nigeria has grown wearily accustomed to is the process government has chosen around it. President Bola Tinubu, in directing what his office describes as a full-scale reform of Nigerian football, explicitly instructed the National Sports Commission to work with the NFF Secretariat through “appropriate engagement with FIFA and CAF while safeguarding Nigeria’s obligations within the international football framework.”

That is precisely the caution this newspaper urged when we first called for accountability at the federation, warning that any move to dissolve or restructure the NFF outside its own constitutional processes risked a FIFA suspension that would punish Nigerian football far more than the current crisis already has. The government appears to have listened to that concern, whether by coincidence or design, and has chosen a path that keeps Nigeria inside FIFA’s rules rather than daring the organisation to intervene. That is the correct instinct, and it deserves acknowledgement even from a newspaper that has been sharply critical of the federation’s performance.

The scale of the collapse that forced this reckoning bears repeating, because it is easy for a resignation to feel like closure before the underlying problem has actually been addressed. The Super Falcons’ failure to reach the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup marked Nigeria’s first absence from that competition since it launched in China thirty-five years ago. That followed the Super Eagles’ failure to reach the 48-team men’s World Cup finals held across the United States, Canada and Mexico, and the U20 Flying Eagles’ failure to qualify for next year’s Africa U20 Cup of Nations. Three different levels of the national programme, men’s and women’s, senior and youth, all failed within the same cycle.

Gusau’s own farewell remarks pointed to genuine achievements during his tenure, expanded coaching education across virtually every license category, a CAF A-License course set to begin on 13 September, a more stable domestic league calendar, progress in refereeing standards, a new 68-room players’ hostel and training pitches at the MKO Abiola National Stadium, continental medals for the Super Eagles at the last two Africa Cup of Nations tournaments, and the Super Falcons’ WAFCON triumph in Morocco in 2025. Those achievements are real, and it would be dishonest to pretend the tenure produced nothing of value. But they did not prevent the collapse that followed, and a fair accounting of this period has to hold both truths at once rather than letting the list of accomplishments soften the scrutiny the failures deserve.

The interim arrangements now in place deserve close attention in the weeks ahead. Dr Emmanuel Ikpeme, previously Deputy General Secretary, has been endorsed by the National Sports Commission to oversee the Secretariat as interim General Secretary, with Dr Ademola Olajire stepping into the deputy role. The NFF Elective Congress originally scheduled for 27 September has been suspended, with a fresh electoral process promised only after the anticipated reforms are completed in consultation with FIFA and CAF.

That is a reasonable sequence in principle, reform first, election second, rather than rushing a vote that only recycles the same governance structure under new names. But an indefinite postponement of elected leadership carries its own risk if the timeline for reform is left vague. Nigerians should demand a published roadmap with actual dates attached, not an open-ended transition that could drift for months while an unelected interim Secretariat runs the federation with no clear endpoint.

The handover of the domestic leagues, the NPFL, the NNL, the Nigeria Women Football League and Nationwide League One, to their chief operating officers is a sensible continuity measure on paper, provided those officers are competent administrators rather than placeholders chosen for convenience. Nigerians watching this transition should ask whether the same structural weaknesses President Tinubu identified, weak governance, thin stakeholder representation, underfunded development pathways and an absence of real accountability, are being addressed at the level of these leagues too, or whether reform talk is stopping at the federation’s top table while the grassroots structures that actually produce players continue to operate exactly as before.

Resignations are the easiest part of accountability, and Nigeria has now completed that part. The harder work, a governance overhaul that survives the next coaching change, a youth development pipeline that stops producing three consecutive missed World Cups at the U17 level, and an elected leadership chosen through a transparent process rather than a backroom consensus, still lies ahead. This newspaper welcomes what has happened as a genuine and overdue step. We will be watching just as closely to see whether it becomes the reform Nigerian football needs, or just a reshuffle with new names attached to the same old outcomes.