AFCON 2025
Nigerian football is bracing for a major shake-up after the National Sports Commission moved to cancel the Nigeria Football Federation’s elective congress, according to a report by The Guardian’s Gowon Akpodonor. The congress had been scheduled for September 27 in Lafia, Nasarawa State, and would have determined the federation’s leadership for the next four years. In its place, the NSC is preparing to install a normalisation committee to run the country’s football affairs for three months.
The move follows a string of setbacks under the Ibrahim Gusau-led NFF executive, which has recorded seven notable failures during its four-year tenure, most damaging among them Nigeria’s failure to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup despite a deep talent pool and an expanded African qualification slot. That record has fuelled growing scrutiny of how the federation manages the resources available to it, including funding from the Federal Government and FIFA’s Forward Programme.
The immediate trigger, according to the Guardian report, was the Super Falcons’ elimination from the African playoff for the 2027 World Cup, where they lost to South Africa’s Banyana Banyana in Morocco last Thursday. The defeat means Nigeria’s women’s team will miss the World Cup for the first time since the tournament began in 1991, a run that had made the Super Falcons ever-present at the competition.
Gusau’s bid for a second term has effectively been derailed by the development. The NSC is said to have secured buy-in from FIFA before acting, reportedly after assuring president Gianni Infantino of Nigeria’s backing in his re-election race, and is understood to have also briefed CAF president Patrice Motsepe on the plan. Neither claim has been independently confirmed by FIFA or CAF.
Behind the scenes, the process of settling on who leads the committee has reportedly hit friction. The NSC’s early preference, former NFF president Amaju Pinnick, was said to have been rejected by senior figures within the Presidency, ruling him out of contention. A separate objection was raised over the NSC’s plan to retain Dr Mohammed Sanusi as the committee’s secretary, adding a further layer of delay to the announcement.
The Guardian reports that the Presidency has now cleared the NSC to unveil the committee within 48 hours, with the final list expected once a key Presidency official returns to Abuja, likely by Tuesday. Until then, the identity of the committee’s chairperson remains unclear.
Contacted for comment, a senior NSC official declined to discuss specifics, calling the matter sensitive and saying only that Nigerians would hear from the commission soon. Once constituted, the committee’s mandate will be to steady the federation’s affairs for three months and lay the groundwork for a fresh election that resolves the concerns stakeholders have long raised about the process.
