Sports
Sports: Challenges Of Playing In The Big Leagues
Nigeria, over the years, has recorded some giant strides in sports so much that the country has come to be regarded as one of the major players in the comity of sporting nations across the world. From the game of football, athletics, weightlifting, wrestling, boxing, basketball, among others, the country has left positive imprints in the sands of time.
From the 1960’s when Nigeria’s senior national team, Red Devils combated with Brazil, to the 1980s, when they, as Green Eagles lifted the country’s maiden African title, the Africa Cup of Nations, Nigeria has demonstrated her prowess and potentials in the round leather game.
Subsequently, the country became the first African country to win a FIFA organised World Cup, when in 1985; the Eaglets conquered the world in China. Subsequent U-17 teams have since succeeded in winning that trophy on unprecedented five occasions.
Nigeria has also gone ahead to win the Afro-Asian Cup in Uzbekistan, went to the Senior World Cup, the apex of world football, five times after confounding the world with their exhilarating performance in her maiden outing at USA’94.
The Olympic team, christened ‘Dream Team’ also held the world spellbound when they conquered Brazil and Argentina enroute winning football gold medal at Atlanta’96 Olympics.
The national U-20 team, the Flying Eagles have also left their mark on the continent and globe.
Time was also when the country was a big player in athletics, especially, the sprints. That was the days of Innocent Egbunike, Chidi Imo, Olapade Adenike, Mary Onyali, Beatrice Utondu, the Ezimwa brothers, Olusola Fasoji, etc. In 1996, Chioma Ajunwo stunned the world to earn Nigeria’s first individual Olympic gold medal when she dusted the field in long jump at the Atlanta’96 Olympic Games.
Regrettably, the exploits of those years were not sustained by the country as we have been unable to reproduce the feats of those years till date.
Suddenly, the country can no longer compete effectively on the tracks, as Blessing Okagbare remains the only visible competitor of note in the sprints, Nigeria’s erstwhile stronghold.
Athletics is not the only casualty of the country’s inability to build on her successes. Weightlighting, wrestling and boxing, which for so many years held so much promise for the country, have lost huge grounds to other countries.
Unfortunately, Nigeria has managed to find herself from one disappointing outing to another at recent world sports competitions, particularly, the Olympic Games and World Athletics Championships.
From time to time, it is only the physically challenged athletes that have succeeded in putting the country’s name on the medals table of the Olympiad (Paralympics).
The country’s performances at the last two Olympics, London 2012 and Rio 2016, where she failed to win any medal, apart from football bronze, have been disastrous. Even when countries like Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, Ethiopia and others hug the Lead lines with their performances at the games and World, Nigeria has been conspicuously missing from the honours table consistently.
Indeed, Sports in Nigeria, apart from football, which seems to be witnessing some kind of renaissance at the moment, are at a sorry pass. The sector is facing tremendous challenges, which if not tackled headlong, would see most of Nigeria teams sinking deeper into oblivion.
So, how did Nigeria get to the current state of affairs and what are the major challenges?
For the Minister of Sports and youth Development, Barr. Solomon Dalung, the major challenges have been funding, sponsorship, planning, transparency and accountability.
Corporate Sponsorship of sporting events and athletes have been a sticking point in Nigeria. While it has been difficult for the private sector to sponsor or invest in sports development as much as would be ideal, access to funding, even from government has been a major issue. These have seen some visions and programmes die on the drawing board.
The President of Sports Writers Association of Nigeria, SWAN, Comrade Honour Sirawoo believes that the country cannot get it right until there is a functional sports policy which is geared towards the revival of grassroots sports development and corporate investment in sports.
The practice in sport, he said, is that it takes between 10 and 12 years, from when a young talented athlete is discovered to when he could possibly be standing on the podium receiving an Olympic or World Championship medal. The period in between would be years of nurturing, of uncommon dedication and discipline, of high-level training and competitions, of sweat, tears and blood. Only the very best ever survive the rigours and emerge a possible champion at the end.
It is a minimum 10-year grueling odyssey. Even then, there is no guarantee of ultimate success. A whole array of things could still turn up to upset the applecant of plans. That is why there must be a dedicated grassroots development programme to follow athletes throughout their formative and forging period.
Comrade Sirawoo noted that with corporate or private sector investment, there would be enough competitions and platforms to wean young talents to stardom.
A renowned athletics coach, Tobias Igwe, popularly known as ‘Toblow’ at different times had said that grassroots sports is synonymous with schools sports. And that focus must be on school sports if the country is to bounce back and begin to dominate in other fields apart from football.
“Simply put, grassroots sports means schools sports. Nigerian sports have always been anchored on schools, primary, secondary and tertiary schools”. According to Nigeria’s Constitution, every Nigerian child must be in school. There is also the unenforced provision that every school must have minimum, basic, functional facilities for all the children to play.
So, mass participation in sports in all schools is essential. At the end of the days, a percentage of them are discovered as exceptionally gifted in particular sports. The process of excelling in sports inculcates in the child the attributes of discipline, friendship, fair play, good conduct, high morals, abstinence from bad habits, leadership, patriotism, determination, team work and the spirit to accept failure only as a stepping stone to bigger success. These are essential life tools that the uninitiated often pay for in adulthood.
Thus, with these experiences at an early stage, an athlete must certainly have been prepared for the challenges of life in his chosen field.
Apart from the seeming abandonment of grassroots sports, further factors challenge the capacity of country’s sports sector.
Absence of top class infrastructure, technocrats and effective reward system are also part of what has held the sports sector down in the country. No country can produce a world beater in absence of a good facility. Modern facilities enhance performance, especially, competitive edge. Thus, for an athlete to thrive during competition, he must have been exposed to the type of equipment to be used before hand.
Often times, Nigerian sports administrators instead of seeing their responsibility as a call to duty tend to exploit the opportunity for selfish purposes. This usually impacts negatively on the performance of the athlete’s.
Over time, administrators have failed to key into or try to adapt the success stories of countries like Jamaica, Kenya, USA, and China, who have been sustaining their performances in their strongholds and trying out new things. If the national sporting leaders do not take cues from the sporting programmes of such leading countries, then, the sporting prowess, talents and passion for which the black race is known for may slowly ebb out of the country.
The performances of team Nigeria at the last two Olympic Games and World Athletics Championships are indicative of the fast dying potency of the country in world sports. They are pointers which glaringly prove that you reap what you sow.
That Nigeria is bedeviled by so much challenges that are hurting her reputation as a player in the big leagues of sporting is clearly stating the obvious, but with the human and material resources at the country’s disposal, riding the crest with the big leagues may not be far-fetched, if only the wrong steps are effectively retraced.
Nigerian football fans and former internationals may have finally joined the call on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to save Nigerian football from the grip of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), demanding a complete overhaul and the resignation of the board following a series of national-team heartbreaks, including the Super Eagles’ failure to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, their second consecutive absence and the Super Falcons’ recent loss of an automatic qualification spot for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil.
Until now, football legend Segun Odegbami has been a lone voice in the vanguard of those calling on the Ibrahim Gusau-led NFF board to step aside. However, many ex-internationals, angered that the national embarrassment has now spilled over to the women’s team, have joined the call to “save our football.”
“We are demanding a total systemic clear-out and consequences at every tier of Nigerian football,” one of the former players said yesterday, pleading to remain anonymous to avoid “arrows” from what he described as desperate officials holding Nigerian football by the jugular.
Ahead of the September 27, 2026 elective congress of the NFF, scheduled to hold in Lafia, Nasarawa State, Chairman of the Advocacy for Nigeria Football Reforms Initiative, Prince Harrison Jalla, has also painted a gloomy picture of the future of Nigerian football.
Jalla’s position is in tandem with that of some aspirants who are also crying blue murder, alleging that the electoral procedure is skewed in favour of incumbent NFF President Ibrahim Musa Gusau to secure a smooth passage to a second term unopposed.
Jalla insisted that “all indicators are pointing to a gloomy picture for the future of Nigerian football, mainly due to administrative ineptitude, while the gladiators remain engrossed and fixated on the election.”
“The major crux of the election is the guidelines, which make it very difficult for other candidates to secure endorsements from across the six geopolitical zones to challenge Gusau.
“The NFF elective congress creates a skewed voting structure because [certain blocs] hold an overwhelming majority of the voting power, which critics argue marginalises key football stakeholders such as club owners, players, coaches, referees and sports writers.
“Out of the total delegates and voting structure, the 37 State FA chairmen form the primary voting bloc, making it difficult for independent candidates to win.
“This is so because of the marriage between the FA chairmen and the NFF. Most FA chairmen depend solely on the Federation for favours. Over time, during national and international engagements, the NFF uses such opportunities to reward the FA chairmen with trips and estacodes.
“They have been so compromised that no Jupiter would make them see reasons for a change. The system, therefore, heavily favours the incumbent leadership seeking re-election. That explains why they were in a hurry to pass a vote of confidence in the NFF leadership even when Nigerian football became topsy-turvy.
“As desperation has beclouded their reasoning, they have forgotten how low they have dragged Nigerian football.”
A cursory look at the catalogue of failures by Nigeria’s national teams will reveal this;
Super Eagles (Senior Men): Failed to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Their campaign ended in agonising fashion in November 2025 during the CAF playoff final, when they lost 4–3 on penalties to DR Congo. This marked the second consecutive World Cup missed by the senior national team. Earlier, in January 2026, they were also eliminated from the 2025 AFCON via a penalty shootout.
Super Falcons (Senior Women): Suffered an early continental exit by losing 1–0 to Cameroon in the 2026 WAFCON quarter-finals. The defeat stripped them of an automatic ticket to the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Brazil, forcing them into an inter-confederation playoff route. Worse still, Banyana Banyana of South Africa stopped the Super Falcons with a 2-1 defeat in Morocco, marking Nigeria’s worst outing in the history of WAFCON.
Golden Eaglets (Men’s U-17): Failed to qualify for the U-17 AFCON and subsequently missed out on three consecutive FIFA U-17 World Cups — 2023, 2025 and 2026.
Flying Eagles (Men’s U-20): Missed both the 2026 U-20 AFCON and the FIFA U-20 World Cup.
Olympic Team (Men’s U-23): Failed to qualify for the 2023 U-23 AFCON, which directly resulted in their failure to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
An official NFF apology to the government and Nigerians was met with backlash, with fans dismissing it as “too little, too late” and “one apology too many”, while demanding actual resignations.
The current frustration among fans stems from what they regard as an unprecedented catalogue of systemic failures across all tiers of Nigeria’s national teams.
Segun Odegbami said the failures had become one too many.
“If you fail to take your team to the World Cup, you find out that more often than not, they vote you out or sack you.
“That’s the measure. If you have a coach who doesn’t do well, they sack him. If you have a player who is doing badly, you remove him.”
“These guys have not succeeded. They’re our friends; that’s the painful thing. We know ourselves. We are all in the business and, when we champion the fact that they should go, they make you an enemy.
“It’s not a personalised thing. They have failed and, if we go back to that route, we are going to fail as we have failed before,” he said.
The financial damage from missing recent major tournaments is equally devastating, with total losses estimated at between ?150 billion and ?300 billion in direct payouts and broader economic partnerships.
This continuous string of qualification failures has effectively choked off the federation’s primary revenue pipelines and left its local development initiatives starved of funds.
The economic wreckage breaks down across several critical areas. By failing to reach the expanded World Cup, the NFF forfeited a guaranteed baseline participation fee of $10.5 million, reportedly worth roughly ?15.5 billion.
This single tournament loss wiped out an amount equivalent to roughly 87 per cent of the NFF’s projected annual operational budget. Had the Super Eagles advanced beyond the group stage, the rewards would have risen above $12 million, while reaching the quarter-finals could have yielded up to $20 million in performance-related payments.
Early exits by the Super Falcons and the qualification failures of the youth teams, U-17, U-20 and U-23, mean the NFF has also missed out on vital developmental subsidies and travel grants normally provided by continental governing bodies.
Corporate organisations and major sports betting companies are scaling back their sponsorship valuations. Without global television exposure, the NFF cannot command premium rates for brand placement.
The federation also misses out on potential revenue from global jersey sales, training gear and licensed supporter memorabilia that normally spike around major tournaments.
By missing out on tournament participation, Nigeria also loses leverage to draw heavily from FIFA’s financial programmes aimed at upgrading domestic training academies and pitches.
Consecutive missed World Cups have further lowered the market value of the national team brand, making future broadcast and marketing rights significantly harder to sell at a premium.
Former Ajax midfielder Hedwiges Maduro has praised Nigerian striker Tolu Arokodare, highlighting the forward’s strength and power and suggesting that he could prove valuable to Ajax in the Eredivisie.
Arokodare joined Ajax from Wolverhampton Wanderers on a season-long loan in July, with the Dutch club holding an option to make the move permanent.
He has already made an impact for his new side, providing an assist in Ajax’s 2-0 victory over PEC Zwolle in their opening Eredivisie fixture.
Maduro discussed Arokodare’s qualities during an appearance on ESPN’s Voetbalpraat, where he assessed how the Nigerian could complement Ajax’s attacking options.
He sees Arokodare as offering a different profile to Marcos Leonardo, particularly against opponents who defend deep and limit the space available for attacking runs.
Speaking about the Nigerian striker, Maduro highlighted his physical qualities and explained why he believes they could make him a valuable option for Ajax in the Dutch top flight.
“I think Tolu has something special, in terms of strength and power. I think he can be of real value in the Eredivisie,” Maduro said, as quoted by Ajax Showtime.
According to Maduro, the tactical demands of certain matches could make Arokodare’s physical presence an important option for Ajax, especially when opponents retreat towards their own penalty area.
He contrasted the situation with Leonardo, who he believes benefits from having space to make attacking runs. Maduro explained that when teams defend deep, those spaces become more difficult to find.
“Leonardo needs space. If teams drop back completely, where are you going to make those runs?
Then you get more use out of Tolu as a focal point to drop the ball,” he added.
The Chairman of the Local Organizing Committee, LOC, of the Arsenal Nigeria Converge 2026, Ugochukwu Oputa, has said that over 25 states across Nigeria were involved in the second edition of the Arsenal Converge scheduled for Port Harcourt from August 14 to 16, 2026.
Oputa disclosed this on Sunday after the Converge meeting at the Ediz Wine Bar in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
According to him, Arsenal’s popularity cuts across the nation, and the Converge is organized to provide a period for supporters to network, interact, and harmonize.
“Knowing how Arsenal’s popularity is spread across the nation, it became necessary that all the different supporters of Arsenal club across the country harmonize and create a particular period where we can meet, network and interact,” Oputa said.
He outlined the five-day schedule of activities to include
Press conference,
Environmental sanitation and community service at Mile 1 Market, Diobu, involving both visitors and residents, arrival, welcome and cocktail party. Others included Games Day, football competition and other fun activities at the Rivers State University football pitch, Community Shield watch party yesterday, where all Arsenal supporters’ groups met, interacted, and discussed the future of Arsenal, including plans for the 2027 hosting rights of the Converge.
Oputa added that this year’s Converge which was in Port Harcourt, had over 3,000 fans registered.
“Port Harcourt Arsenal Community is a recognized supporters’ club of Arsenal in London and we have over 25 states that participated in the Arsenal Nigeria Converge 2026,” he said.
Also speaking, a member of the Nigeria Arsenal Supporters Working Committee, Nsikak Ntia, said that what distinguishes Arsenal supporters is their offline community impact.
“What we are doing here in Port Harcourt is beyond football. It’s a family that is growing. We had over 3,000 to 4,000 people on Saturday at the Rivers State University that shared the confidence that Arsenal represents,” Ntia said.
He noted that the club’s motto, ‘Victoria Concordia Crescit’ – ‘Victory Through Harmony’ – is the bedrock of the group.
“The work that we do at Mile 1 Market is to help with environmental protection and increase what we do in society.
“We also have future plans to promote environmental protection and better ways to handle waste.
“These are things that are germane for our future, the future of our young people and generations unborn.
” It goes beyond football, it goes beyond banter, it goes beyond yapping at each other.
“That is what Arsenal Football Club is all about. Arsenal has the most well-organized supporters’ club in Nigeria and Africa’ he sated.
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