SUPER EAGLES AND THE SHAME IN MOROCCO
In spite of the embarrassment, the players should put in their best
Hardly a week passes without the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) and any of the national teams under its watch trending on social media for the wrong reasons. In the last ten days, there have been reports of two scandalous FIFA Forward projects involving the NFF and some officials with lurid details that speak to sharp practices. While one of the projects is located in Kebbi State, the other is in Ugborodo, Delta State. But perhaps the biggest scandal is happening in Morocco, where Nigerians are looking forward to the Super Eagles salvaging the image of the country through a crucial four-nations tournament which commences today.
Ordinarily, Nigeria should not be in this desperate situation. But in the 10-match African qualifiers for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the Super Eagles finished second behind South Africa. Even at that, it was by a stroke of fortune that Nigeria qualified on the last day as one of the four best runners up nations in the nine groups and only because three points were deducted from South Africa which fielded an ineligible player when they defeated Lesotho in the qualifying round. The reward is for Nigeria to play in the series where the winner automatically qualifies for the Intercontinental Playoffs in Mexico for two remaining World Cup tickets. That is the opportunity now being bungled in Morocco. On Tuesday, the Super Eagles announced a ‘sit-at-home’ in their Rive Hotel rooms, to protest over owed bonuses and allowances, some dating back two years.
While the issue was resolved yesterday afternoon, according to a post by Super Eagles Skipper, William Troost-Ekong, this is a familiar scandal. But the NFF seems to have learnt nothing from their own sordid past. At the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, a similar boycott of training led to the crashing out of the Super Eagles at the Round of 16. The players had boycotted training to press home the payment of outstanding allowances while they were just 24 hours away from the clash with France. The federal government had to send cash from Abuja to pay the players before Nigeria was saved the embarrassment of going into history books as the first country to boycott a World Cup match over bonus disputes.
It is a shame that our football administrators cannot appreciate the implications of their Morocco misadventure. For a country of over 220 million citizens who love the game of football, failure to qualify for the World Cup back-to-back would be an anathema. This is the reason why the NFF and the National Sports Commission (NSC) ought to have put everything in place to ensure that the Super Eagles win the African playoffs in Morocco and qualify for the Intercontinental Playoffs in March next year. But with players boycotting practice sessions, it is now a game of chance for Nigeria against the pantheons of Gabon today and the subsequent match should they win.
If the reports of the players not being paid their allowances as at when due is true, nobody should question why they took the decision to boycott training on Tuesday. If it is also true that the NFF has collected funds for the prosecution of both the Lesotho and Benin Republic matches during the qualifiers from the supervisory National Sports Commission (NSC) and refused to pay the players and officials, the federal government needs to step in to save the country from any further embarrassment. It may require a dialogue with FIFA authorities, but Nigeria cannot continue with public officials who consistently misbehave yet consider themselves untouchable because of some statutes. Regardless of how tonight’s match plays out, the federal government must muster the courage to put an end to this perennial embarrassment.
