Latest News
Odegbami says NFF board must step aside after Nigeria’s football setbacks
Former Nigeria international Segun Odegbami says the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) board must accept responsibility for the country’s recent football failures and should not seek re-election.
Odegbami, one of Nigeria’s most respected former internationals, believes the difficulties facing the country’s national teams show that those overseeing the game have not fulfilled their responsibilities.
His view is that failure must carry consequences and that the appropriate consequence should be for the current NFF board to step aside.
Speaking about the recent developments involving Nigeria’s national teams, Odegbami said football administrators should be judged by the same standards as coaches and players. If a team fails to achieve its main objective, he argued, changes should follow at every level.
Qualification for major tournaments, according to the former Super Eagles star, should be one of the clearest ways to assess whether administrators are doing their jobs effectively. He believes the principles applied to players and coaches must also apply to those running the federation.
Odegbami stressed that his criticism was not intended as a personal attack on individual members of the NFF board. Instead, he described his position as one based on performance, responsibility and accountability.
The former Nigeria international acknowledged that the people currently in charge of Nigerian football are friends and colleagues from within the football community. That, he indicated, makes the situation especially difficult.
However, he maintained that personal relationships cannot be allowed to take priority over the interests of Nigerian football. Disagreement with the performance of football administrators, he said, should not automatically be treated as hostility towards them.
For Odegbami, calls for change are not about creating enemies. They are about recognising when the system has failed and avoiding a repeat of the same mistakes.
He also insisted that the current NFF leadership should not regard demands for them to leave office as a personal attack. Instead, he believes the board should examine the results achieved under its watch and accept the consequences attached to them.
In his view, those results should be sufficient to prompt a change at the top of Nigerian football. He argued that the country cannot continue along the same path while expecting different outcomes.
The former Super Eagles player’s comments come during another difficult period for Nigerian football, with renewed attention on the performances of the national teams and the leadership responsible for overseeing them.
His central argument is that failure must have consequences. Coaches can be dismissed when results decline, while players can lose their places when their performances fall below expectations. Odegbami believes administrators should face comparable scrutiny when the teams under their supervision fail to meet major objectives.
He therefore believes the current NFF board should not attempt to return to office. Allowing the same leadership to remain after what he regards as a failure, he argues, could prolong a cycle that has already harmed Nigerian football.
The most personal aspect of Odegbami’s position is his acknowledgement that he knows and considers friends many of the people he is criticising. Even so, he believes those relationships should not prevent Nigerians from demanding accountability.
His broader message is that football administration should not be treated as a permanent position in which leaders remain in office regardless of results. If coaches and players can be replaced after failing to deliver, he argues, administrators should not be exempt.
“It’s not a personalized thing. They have failed.”
