President Bola Tinubu has ordered a comprehensive reform of Nigerian football following repeated failures by the country’s national teams to qualify for major international tournaments.
The presidential directive came on Thursday, hours after the President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Ibrahim Musa Gusau, the General Secretary, Mohammed Sanusi, and members of the federation’s Executive Committee resigned amid mounting public pressure over the decline of the nation's football.
Confirming the mass resignations in a statement on Thursday, the NFF explained that Gusau’s decision was intended to clear the path for “a comprehensive and orderly reform process” to resolve longstanding institutional, governance, and developmental challenges facing the sport.
Announcing the directive, the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, stated that Tinubu ordered the overhaul to enable Nigeria to overcome its persistent qualification setbacks across regional, continental, and global competitions.
The President attributed the continuous downturn in Nigerian football to structural weaknesses within the administrative system, noting that other sporting sectors had recorded visible progress following the restructuring of the sports landscape under the re-established National Sports Commission.
Tinubu said, “The reform must respond to a longstanding need to strengthen governance, administration, stakeholder representation, development pathways, domestic competitions and accountability across Nigerian football,”.
He added, “Football, Nigeria’s most popular sport and the greatest beneficiary of public support, investment and national attention, has continued to struggle basically due to structural deficits within the system.”
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