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The Nigerian American Football Association (NAFA) has set its sights on the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games as Season 5 of the Nigerian Secondary Schools Flag Football League (NSSFFL), themed “Raised Here: Play for the Ones Who Raised You,” gets under way across 10 States in the preliminaries.
Although the league covers 18 states this season, 10 states are holding the state preliminaries: Lagos, Akwa Ibom, Benue, Ogun, Ondo, Oyo, Kwara, Cross River, Bayelsa and Abuja.
At the national finals, the Aketi Bowl IV, the winning teams in both the men’s and women’s categories will each take home N1 million. Second-place teams will receive N500,000, and third-place teams N350,000.
Speaking at a media briefing on Monday, NAFA Vice President Nancy Damhindi said the league has grown from a pilot in Lagos in 2022 into a structured school-sports programme. She said the focus this season is on strengthening that foundation and widening participation.
She said Season 5 involves a minimum of eight schools per state, which means at least 144 schools, 288 boys’ and girls’ teams and 2,880 student-athletes in the state preliminaries. Preseason activities in new and existing states could reach about 6,000 student engagements, she added. She stressed that this figure is an estimate, subject to confirmation of school coverage, and is not an additional count of registered athletes.
Damhindi said the theme honours the schools, teachers, coaches and families behind every student-athlete.
She said NAFA’s development work starts before secondary school.
Through its K-12 initiative, it has introduced “Jojo and the Winning Play,” described as the first American flag football storybook in Africa. At the under-13 level, the winning school team from April’s NAFA U13 National Tournament represented Nigeria at the 2026 NFL Flag Africa Championship in Kenya in July and won gold.
At senior level, she said athletes who came through the NSSFFL have gone on to play for Nigeria. This follows Nigeria’s gold medals in both the men’s and women’s categories at the inaugural African Flag Football Championship in Egypt in 2025. These athletes won selection again in 2026 and represented the country at the 2026 NFL Flag Continental Games in Kenya.
With flag football making its Olympic debut at LA28, Damhindi said Nigerian athletes are working towards the possibility of competing, with the ambition of making Nigeria the first African nation in Olympic flag football. She noted that participation depends on the qualification process and final selection. She is hopeful that athletes who have benefited from scholarships in Nigeria and abroad will make the national team for Los Angeles.
NAFA is also developing the Nigeria Collegiate Flag Football League, working with the Nigerian Universities Games Association, so that students can continue playing at tertiary level.
Damhindi said the preliminaries are about more than deciding who advances. She described them as a way to assess progress and identify the teams that will qualify for the Aketi Bowl IV. She called on coaches to improve their grasp of the game, on school administrators to back student participation, and on coordinators and technical officials to uphold standards, with student welfare and education kept central.
She acknowledged the Nigerian School Sport Federation, which she called central to delivering the league. She also thanked Browns Nigeria and NFL FLAG for the One Ball, One Flag, One Future initiative, which provides about 2,000 American footballs and 5,000 flag football kits. She thanked the Oluwarotimi Akeredolu Foundation, which honours NAFA’s founding chairman, and the Gridiron Gems initiative, which promotes opportunities for women and girls, including in coaching, officiating and leadership.
She called for cooperation and investment from both public and private organisations to make the league a success.
Oluwatobi Abe, coordinator, NSSFFL and Head of Grassroots Programme, NAFA said in his address that there is plenty more to see of the athletes.
