THE RULE THAT WORKS FOR EVERYBODY ELSE

While FIFA should be consistent with its rules, Nigeria should play to win, argues JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA

In Rabat last November, Lionel Mpasi saved two penalties and denied Nigeria the last pathway to the World Cup. He played all the minutes of that playoff final. The match finished one apiece, Congo won the shootout, and the Super Eagles missed a second consecutive World Cup. It was a clean defeat and most of us accepted it as one.

This week the New York Times and Le Monde published what FIFA’s own officials had already concluded. Mpasi, who holds French and Congolese nationality and played for France at youth level, had not completed the paperwork required to switch his international affiliation. By FIFA’s own finding, he should not have been on that pitch.

FIFA has not denied any of it.

Nigeria filed a complaint in December. FIFA’s internal review considered four courses of action. Award the match to Nigeria. Fine the Congolese federation. Replace Congo with Nigeria in the intercontinental playoff against Jamaica. Or dismiss the complaint on the ground that Nigeria had filed it late.

It chose the fourth. Congo beat Jamaica by a single goal in extra time and went to the World Cup.

Ibrahim Musa Gusau, who led the federation at the time, says he was told the complaint had been dismissed for technical reasons and was never informed that FIFA had found a problem with the goalkeeper’s eligibility.

So the governing body reached a finding on the substance, declined to act on it, and communicated only the procedural outcome to the party that had asked the question. Nigeria discovered the substance from a newspaper ten months later.

Whether the dismissal was correct is arguable. Deadlines exist for good reasons, and the NFF must take responsibility for its own tardiness. What is not arguable is that you cannot find a breach, decline to disclose it to the complainant, and then describe the process as independent.

In September last year, in the same qualifying cycle, FIFA sanctioned South Africa for fielding an ineligible player against Lesotho. Teboho Mokoena had accumulated yellow cards that should have suspended him. FIFA stripped South Africa of the points and awarded Lesotho a three nil victory.

Nigeria, incidentally, was a direct beneficiary of that ruling. It reopened our group and it is part of how we reached the playoff at all. What we are entitled to ask is why the same regulation produced a sanction in one case and a procedural dismissal in the other, and why one of those outcomes was announced while the other was withheld.

FIFA says its committees operate independently and that Gianni Infantino had no role in the decision. I have no evidence to the contrary and I will not manufacture any. The question is not whether he intervened. The question is whether an institution applies its own rules consistently, and on the available record it did not.

On the other hand, we are terrible plaintiffs.

Two days before the semi-final against Gabon, the entire Nigerian squad, players and officials together, refused to train in Morocco because they had not been paid. Not a dispute over bonuses for winning. Money already owed. Our players went into a World Cup knockout tie having spent the preceding week arguing about whether they would be paid for playing it.

They won that match anyway, which tells you something about the players and nothing good about the federation.

After the Congo defeat, the entire NFF board resigned. That is not the action of an organisation that had been running competently and was then robbed. It is the collapse of an administration that had been failing at the basics for years, and the Punch editorial at the time named it: a culture of incompetence, breached contracts and unpaid obligations that undermined the national team at every significant moment.

So both things are true, and Nigerians should be able to hold them at the same time.

FIFA found an ineligible player, said nothing to us about it, and let the result stand. That is a failure of governance at the highest level of world football, and it deserves the investigation the former federation president is now asking for. FIFA is simply bad run and this is one of many proofs of that.

We arrived at that tribunal as a country that cannot pay its own footballers on time, cannot keep a board in place, and filed its complaint late.

There is a longer pattern here. In 2006 we went out of a World Cup on head- to- head, level on points with Angola. In 2022 we went out on away goals, a rule UEFA had already abolished as indefensible. In 2026 we went out on a filing deadline.

Twenty years, three eliminations, and on each occasion the football itself could not separate us from the team that qualified.

That is the uncomfortable lesson, and it is not about FIFA at all. Every one of those exits was decided in a margin so narrow that a clause could fit inside it. A team that wins its group does not need a tie-breaker. A team that wins in Kumasi does not need away goals explained to it. A team that scores in Rabat does not need a lawyer.

The rule should work for everybody. It plainly does not, and that should be pursued. But the surest way to stop losing to paperwork is to stop finishing close enough for paperwork to matter.

Lionel Messi represents the ultimate standard in football. He is proof that one man can focus the world’s attention on a country. He has done this for the most part of the last two decades. This week, he took it to its utmost heights as he closed the chapter on his time with the Albiceleste. He is an example for us as a country and for our players. Glory awaits excellence. Doing things the right way has its reward and whilst success is never guaranteed, repeatedly committing to doing more and doing better has its rewards. FIFA failed us, but did we not already fail ourselves?

 Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/BGX Publishing