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Nigeria’s football governance overhaul does not need to drag on for up to a year, according to the Advocacy for Nigeria Football Reform Initiative, which is urging the National Sports Commission to wrap up the process within three months.
The group’s intervention comes after National Sports Commission Chairman, Mallam Shehu Dikko, addressed the matter in an Arise TV interview on September 4 — so far the only official window into how the reform will unfold, with the Commission yet to issue a formal press statement on its shape or direction.
In a statement signed by its chairman, Prince Harrison Jalla, the Advocacy said it was particularly concerned by the timeline Dikko outlined during the interview, which ranged from three to six months and potentially as long as a year, calling the projection “complex, unwieldy, and vague.”
The group commended the Commission for what it called a peaceful handling of the exit of the Ibrahim Gusau-led Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) board, and praised Gusau and his team for stepping down voluntarily.
However, it argued that the key issues facing Nigerian football is the composition of the NFF Congress and Executive Board, the makeup of standing committees, expanding Congress to include groups such as the private sector, and correcting imbalances in voting rights do not require more than three months to resolve.
This, the group said, includes determining whether the NFA Act 2004 needs to be revisited, whether the NFF Statutes require review, or whether the Association should be registered as an NGO with the Corporate Affairs Commission.
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The Advocacy also called for the transition to make room for the participation of the Footballers’ Bloc, which it said has campaigned for reform for over two decades, adding that what it termed a “policy of divide and rule” against the group must end.
The statement noted that any transition timeline should take Nigeria’s upcoming general election calendar, as released by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), into account, given that government remains the largest funder of football in the country and new administrations typically take time to settle in. On that basis, the group proposed that NFF elections be held in early January 2027, describing a three-month transition as sufficient.
Drawing a historical comparison, the statement referenced General Abdulsalami Abubakar’s transition to civilian rule following the death of General Sani Abacha, which was originally planned for nine months and eventually ran to eleven. It questioned why football reform should take longer than three months when that national transition did not.
The group said it awaits further details from the Commission and is looking for a transparent and democratic process.
It also disputed figures cited by Dikko in the interview, in which he reportedly said the Gusau-led board received five times more funding than the NFF board that served from 2014 to 2022. The Advocacy said it would address that claim in a separate release.
