By Douglas Baye-Osagie
_dbayeosagie@yahoo.com_
Four years. That is all it took to take Nigerian football from “sleeping giant” to “patient in ICU.” Under the leadership of Ibrahim Gusau and his NFF board, the promise of 2022 has turned into excuses, early exits, calculator qualifications, and embarrassment in 2026. The time for press statements is over. The time for resignation is now.
Let’s be honest about the results. In the past four years, the Super Eagles failed to qualify for a World Cup. Same for the Olympics football event . The Super Falcons also failed to qualify. The U20s and U17s, once our pride, became afterthoughts. The CHAN Eagles could not even get out of the group. Every benchmark we set for ourselves was diminished.
It is not just about losing matches. It is about how we lost them. No plan. No identity. Coaches hired today, sacked tomorrow. Players had to be begged to play for Nigeria. Camps opened 48 hours before games. Bonuses went unpaid. It looked like an association running on vibes, not structure.
A football federation is not supposed to be surviving from one crisis to another. It is supposed to build. Under Gusau’s board, we built nothing. No league reform. No youth development. No data. No medical department that works. Just firefighting.
The NFF board had one job: to restore pride. Instead, they inherited goodwill from Rohr, Pinnick, and Osimhen’s rise, and spent it all. They took the most talented generation of Nigerian players in 20 years and gave them chaos. We missed a second World Cup in a row, even when we had a relatively easy group to navigate.
The news from the Presidency is cheering.
It is good that calls for the board to resign are getting louder. A voluntary resignation is the cleanest way out. It saves us from the long, shameful road with FIFA — the bans, the normalization committees, and the headlines that say “Nigeria suspended again.”
We have been down that road before. In 2014. In 2018. Every time government or factions interfere, FIFA knocks. And every time, football suffers while administrators play politics. Gusau and his board should not take us there again. Walk away with dignity. We have watched Nigerian football go down, and the fans have not decided to chase you out of office. Don’t force them to.
The benchmarks were clear in 2022 when they came in: Qualify for the World Cup in 2026. Win AFCON. Make the league professional. Pay coaches. Clear debts. Develop women’s football. Grow the grassroots. Four years later, which one can they point to and say “we delivered”?
The NPFL is still broke and changes sponsors like Diapers. Referees are still owed. State Governments and club owners still run teams like family businesses. The NFF could not even guarantee a home stadium that meets CAF standards for six months. If that is not failure, what is? If Uyo was not ready, we might have been playing our home games in Togo or Ghana.
Meanwhile, our players are our biggest export. Osimhen, Lookman, Iwobi, Boniface, Ajibade, Oshoala,Nnadozie — they are carrying the Nigerian brand on their backs in Europe. But at home, the house that should support them is collapsing.
Women’s football was diminished. The Falcons, 10-time African champions, were treated like an afterthought. Then we expected to stroll into WAFCON and pick up an 11th title. We received the shock of our lives. There was no proper preparation for the World Cup qualifiers, and the girls were beaten and failed to qualify. No league support. The board talked about “equal treatment” but showed the opposite.
Youth football was abandoned. No U17 World Cup qualification. No U20 structure. Countries like Morocco, Senegal, and Ivory Coast are passing us because they invested in 12-year-olds while we were busy fighting over NFF elections.
This is not just about Gusau as a person. It is about a system that has failed. When results don’t come, when structures don’t improve, and when stakeholders lose confidence, the honorable thing is to step aside and let fresh ideas come in.
Nigeria deserves a football federation that thinks like a business and acts like a national institution. We need term limits, independent audits, technical directors with real power, and a league that can pay players ₦500,000 a month without begging.
We need a board that understands media, branding, and data. Not one that hides when we lose and appears only to take pictures when we win. Football in 2026 is run on analytics, sports science, and partnerships. We are still running on “oga, help us.”
A fresh start means new faces, yes. But more importantly, a new culture. No more emergency coach appointments. No more 3am flight bookings a few days to a serious match. No more using the national team to settle personal scores. Professionalism from top to bottom.
The players deserve better. The fans deserve better. The kid in Katsina kicking a ball barefoot deserves to believe that if he is good enough, the NFF will find him — not that he needs an “uncle on the board” to get a call-up.
To Gusau and the board: you tried. But the numbers and the results are clear. Four years, and every index has gone down. Do not wait for FIFA to push you. Do not wait for government to dissolve you. Resign honorably.
Nigeria is still the Brazil of Africa in talent. That has not changed. What has changed is management. And management can be changed today. A resignation is not failure. Staying and destroying what’s left is failure.
Nigerian football needs a fresh start. Not in 2027. Not after the next embarrassment. Now. A new board, new vision, new benchmarks, and real accountability. Let Gusau’s exit be the beginning of rebuilding, not the end of another era.
Because if we don’t reset now, in four years we will be writing this same article again.