The Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) in a periodic audit, is reviewing the performances of the country’s national teams across age grades and genders and putting a plan in place to jack up their performance.
Ibrahim Musa Gusau, NFF President, made this disclosure on Tuesday, while reviewing the activities of the body and the performance of the teams in one year of his Board in office.
Gusau also used the opportunity to articulate expectations for the next one year.
He said the football-governing body is working diligently to ensure that come next year, all the national teams achieve significant improvement and win laurels in competitions that they participate in.
Notable achievements of the past year, he said, included a first-ever podium finish at the FIFA U17 Women’s World Cup; quarter-final performance of the Flying Eagles at the FIFA U20 World Cup; qualification of the Super Eagles to the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations and best-ever outing by the Super Falcons at the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
Gusau declared that the Board and Secretariat have worked in collaboration to clean the football space of all forms of toxicity, as well as create an all-inclusive platform for everyone.
“One of our priorities on coming into office, was to ensure that the football environment was cleansed of so much toxicity that had threatened the health of the game and made some persons feel unwelcome in the system. We have tried our best to give everyone a sense of belonging with a policy of inclusiveness.
“Off the pitch, we are proud of the work of the Interim Management Committee that we constituted to organise the last NPFL League Season, which was commended by all stakeholders, and we also feel fulfilled about the constitution of the boards of the NNL, NWFL and NLO with vibrant, knowledgeable and competent individuals who are capable of taking the leagues to the next level. Elections into the State FAs have also been largely peaceful and successful.”
According to Sports Village Square, Gusau said his board will work assiduously and diligently with the secretariat and the Federal Ministry of Sports Development to see the Super Eagles off to a great start in the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualifying series and to win the 34th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations in Cote d’Ivoire early next year.
“We also want to see the Super Falcons reclaim their African title and return to the Women Olympic Football Tournament.
“Our expectations include making good progress in our plan for hostel accommodation and some playing pitches for the National Teams, through the FIFA Forward 3.0 program, and also see that the U17 and U20 Women National Teams achieve their best-ever outings at their different World Cups next year.
“We are working already with the new NPFL Board to grow the NPFL into the product that all administrators and stakeholders desire, and also with the boards of the other leagues to improve the state of our domestic football. To achieve all these, we need money, so we are also looking to work even harder to grow our revenue base through an aggressive marketing drive.”
The NFF boss said his team will also not allow any FIFA window for friendly matches to go unutilised. “As you can see, we have arranged two matches for the Super Eagles in this month’s window, against Saudi Arabia and Mozambique.
“Mozambique is in southern Africa, where three of our opponents in the World Cup qualifiers, namely Lesotho, Zimbabwe and South Africa also are. Playing Mozambique is a good opportunity for the team to have a sneak preview of what to expect against these three teams.”
Also at the parley were NFF Executive Committee members H. E. Ali Silas Agara and Mr. George Aluo; NFF General Secretary, Dr. Mohammed Sanusi; Chairman of Anambra State FA, Chikelue Iloenyosi; NFF Director of Communications, Ademola Olajire; Director of Competitions, Ruth David and Head of Member Associations, Ali Abubakar Muhammad.
