By Ehi Braimah,
Nigeria should stop pretending that pouring public money into sports is the same thing as developing sports. It is not. For decades, government has funded football through grants, interventions, bonuses, camps, competitions, travel and assorted forms of financial assistance.
Yet, the more government spends, the more dysfunctional the system appears to become. At what point do we admit that the model itself is broken?
The latest evidence is staring us in the face. The Super Eagles did not participate at the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Nigeria also missed Qatar 2022 which means the Super Eagles have now missed two consecutive World Cups.
This is particularly painful and a bitter pill to swallow because Africa had ten places at the expanded 48-team tournament. Nigeria still could not make it. The Eagles finished second in their qualifying group and subsequently lost to DR Congo on penalties in the African play-off.
Football is Nigeria’s drumbeat. It is one of the few things capable of bringing together Nigerians across ethnic, religious, political and social divides.
When the Super Eagles play, the country stops, and when they win, Nigeria celebrates together. That is why this failure hurts so much.
But the crisis is deeper than the Super Eagles. The Super Falcons, once the undisputed queens of African women’s football, have suffered an even more devastating setback. Nigeria lost 1-0 to Cameroon in the WAFCON quarter-final and subsequently lost 2-1 to South Africa in the play-off for a place in the 2027 Women’s World Cup in Brazil.
Consequently, Nigeria will miss the Women’s World Cup for the first time since the competition began in 1991. This is not an ordinary footballing disappointment – it is an egregious warning signal.
And the response cannot simply be another change of personnel. I have seen this movie before. Whenever Nigerian football enters crisis mode, the familiar chorus begins: sack the NFF president; dissolve the board; bring in new people; start afresh. But where has that taken us?
We do not have a single enduring football structure, or world-class facilities. The lack of a properly functioning grassroots development system and the absence of a sustainable football economy appear to compound our misery. We keep changing the occupants of the house without repairing the house.
That is why I do not subscribe to the clamour by Shehu Dikko and others seeking to take over Nigerian football.
Those who have been part of the system – including Dikko – that produced today’s crisis should not simply return under another arrangement and promise us another “new beginning”.
Nigerians deserve to know what went wrong, who is responsible and, most importantly, what structural reforms will prevent a repetition.
The question is not merely whether Ibrahim Gusau, the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) President, and the board and should go. The bigger question is: what system replaces them?
There is no escaping the issue of accountability. The House of Representatives has previously moved to investigate allegations concerning about $25 million in FIFA and CAF grants received by the NFF between 2015 and 2025.
More recently, the NFF itself confirmed that documents relating to a ₦12 billion Federal Government intervention fund are with the EFCC and ICPC as part of ongoing investigations.
Importantly, no wrongdoing has been established against any individual merely because an investigation exists, or that stories of alleged corruption are always what we hear.
But the fact that such a substantial public intervention is under investigation makes transparency imperative.
There have also been media investigations raising questions about payments from NFF funds into private accounts.
One investigation reported at least ₦152.6 million in payments to private accounts linked to officials, staff and associates between 2018 and 2026. These allegations require proper investigation, not political spin or the influence of godfathers.
The NFF, on its part, says its accounts are audited and that FIFA and CAF funds are tied to specific purposes and subject to monitoring. Its 2025 Congress approved audited financial statements for 2024 and passed a vote of confidence in the Gusau-led board. That is precisely why Nigerians need independent, verifiable accountability, not competing narratives.
If the books are clean, open them, and if the money was properly spent, show us. If there were failures, identify them, and if officials are culpable, let the law take its course. That is how a serious football economy works.
Government must also accept responsibility for creating a system that encourages dependency.
Why should government be paying the Super Eagles’ win bonuses? Why should a national football federation continually return to government for money to perform its core responsibilities? Why should taxpayers repeatedly finance a professional sport that possesses enormous commercial potential? Questions that need answers.
This is definitely not an argument for abandoning sports – it is a business case for changing the role of government.
My view is that government should provide infrastructure, establish the regulatory framework, protect the integrity of competitions and create an enabling environment for private investment.
Government should not be the perpetual financier of professional football. This Father Christmas mentality must end. Look at the state of our sporting infrastructure and see the shame we have brought upon ourselves because of poor visionary leadership at the helm.
CAF’s rejection of several traditional home grounds for Nigerian clubs in the 2026/27 continental competitions is a humiliating reminder that Nigeria still lacks enough facilities that meet international standards.
Rangers, Rivers United and Shooting Stars were among the clubs whose traditional venues were not approved, leaving them to adopt alternative grounds.
The Federal Government itself has acknowledged the problem, approving major rehabilitation work at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium in Abuja because its condition has limited its use by national teams.
If we didn’t have the Godswill Akpabio International Stadium, the Nest of Champions owned by the Akwa Ibom State government in Uyo, where would the Super Eagles have been playing their FIFA-graded home matches?
This is the absurdity of Nigerian sports: we can spend billions managing crises but cannot consistently maintain the infrastructure that would prevent them.
Morocco offers one of the best examples in Africa of what a country’s sports infrastructure should look like. Perhaps that explains why the country has a “strong hold” on CAF.
Secondary-school sports have virtually disappeared as a serious talent-development pipeline. Adults sometimes compete in sporting events designed for children; grassroots competitions are sporadic; facilities are in a permanent state of decay, and leagues struggle.
When an athlete or team produces an accidental success, we celebrate it as if it were the product of a functioning system. That is clearly not the case – it is usually an outlier.
The reality is that we are trying to climb the tree from the top and then wonder why we keep falling. The National Sports Commission under Chairman Shehu Dikko must therefore act – and act now.
The Commission has a historic opportunity to redefine the relationship between government and Nigerian sports. Its stated ambition of creating a sustainable sports economy cannot remain another slogan – it must become a measurable programme of reform.
The first step should be to distinguish clearly between government’s responsibility and the sports industry’s responsibility.
Government should fund infrastructure; support grassroots and school sports, and provide a carefully structured seed funding to revive dead or dying leagues.
Government should also use the National Lottery Trust Fund more strategically. Nigeria already has a mechanism specifically designed to support good causes, including sports.
The Lottery Trust Fund states that 20 percent of lottery proceeds is allocated to the Trust Fund and that sports will receive 20 percent of the Fund’s sectoral allocation.
Why are we not using this mechanism more aggressively and transparently to rebuild grassroots sports? Why are we not creating sustainable facilities instead of endlessly funding short-term participation? Why are we not demanding measurable outcomes from every naira invested?
The United Kingdom provides an instructive lesson – not because the British government simply “funded the Premier League”, as is sometimes suggested, but because football evolved into a powerful commercial ecosystem supported by regulation, investment, broadcasting, infrastructure and private capital.
The Premier League’s revenues grew dramatically from about £170 million in 1991/92 to £5.15 billion in 2018/19, and close to £7 billion in 2024/25.
That is the direction Nigeria should be heading because it is possible for sports to become big business.
Let the NFF president who wants to lead Nigerian football tell the Congress how he intends to raise money to run football without perpetual government spoon-feeding.
In addition, let every candidate publish a five-year commercialisation plan and explain how they will attract sponsors.
How will they grow broadcast revenue? How will they improve match-day revenue? How will they develop licensing and merchandising? Do they even understand the business case of turning sports into a profitable enterprise?
How much revenue can the domestic league generate? Can we make Nigerian football attractive to investors? Can football administrators guarantee transparency? And, above all, how will they spend other people’s money? More questions without answers.
Corporate Nigeria will invest in sports when it sees stability, accountability, transparency and commercial opportunity.
No serious investor wants to enter a dysfunctional system where rules change arbitrarily, accountability is weak and political influence determines outcomes.
Corporate sponsors want to sit at a table with people who understand sports business and how to scale opportunities.
A football model without processes, predictable regulations, audited accounts and measurable returns will not be supported by sponsors as we see in other parts of the world.
Potential corporate sponsors want institutions with safe guards, not personalities. Government must take the back seat always.
This is where the National Sports Commission must demonstrate leadership. Dikko should resist the temptation to become another political centre of gravity in Nigerian sports.
The Commission must not simply replace one form of interference with another. Instead, it should strengthen federations while holding them accountable without government control.
Chairman Dikko, the answer to our challenges in sports is good governance, transparency and accountability, which we can also describe as “responsible stewardship”.
All the contending forces and political factions aiming for the nation’s football Glass House in order to take over the NFF should show us their plans for institutional reforms.
Meanwhile, let me repeat myself: government should only provide the seed money, infrastructure and enabling environment for sports to develop and thrive in Nigeria, and then back off.
If the environment is right, private capital will come. If the rules are clear, sponsors will come, and if accounts are transparent, investors will come.
It is also evident that if the leagues are properly organised, broadcasters will show interest, just as fans will return when the competitions are credible.
This is because our passion for sports, especially football, has turned into a huge movement of friends and fans.
Then, of course, the money will follow. It is not rocket science. Nigeria does not lack talent – what we lack are systems and the institutional confidence to unlock commercial opportunities.
The current football crisis is therefore bigger than Gusau and Dikko. It is also bigger than the NFF. It is a crisis of a model that has failed and that is the reform Nigeria needs.
Anything else is simply another change of faces. And Nigerians have had enough of changing faces while the house continues to collapse.
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