Follow Us on Google
By Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
Miffed by the failure of the Super Eagles to qualify for the forthcoming USA, Canada and Mexico 2026 FIFA World Cup, former vice president of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), Ogbuefi Gabriel Chukwuma, has pleaded with President Bola Tinubu, to dissolve the entire Ibrahim Gusau-led football federation board.
Chukwuma, the owner of Gabros International FC of Nnewi said that beside the failure to qualify the team for the 2026 World Cup, the current board has rendered all male national teams powerless, reducing them to minnows of African football easily beaten by unpopular or unknown names in football.
He further said that even as they are currently seeking boardroom qualification from FIFA over alleged eligibility of some Congo DR players used in the last play-off, the NFF board should resign, because if they had gotten their acts together earlier, the Super Eagles would have qualified normally, with ease without depending on play-offs.
He recalled that; “Since last year, I have been telling them to contact me so that I can assist in contributing money and can possibly engage some of my friends to assist, if money was their problem.”
“Now, they have failed, there is nothing they can do. They should stop deceiving the president or Nigerian. Just because our president is a listening president, they go to him and deceive him. They forget that Nigerians like football. They hardly eat or sleep when Nigerian teams are playing as they are always ready to watch them.
“The Federal Government gave them tax payers’ money, including my money and they swallowed it. Nigeria has a crop of best legs in the whole world. But the problem is that those who manage our football don’t know what to do. They are only interested in doing players’ agent.
Other News
“Everybody wants his player to play matches. Football is either you get results or you get rich. As long as you want to enrich yourself you cannot get results. I said this many months ago that Nigeria cannot qualify for the World Cup. Not that I was wishing them bad luck but just to challenge them to qualify for World Cup,” he angrily said.
Speaking further, Chukwuma reiterated, “Let me say it again, all NFF board members should resign from their positions to allow young managers take over the management of football in the country and prepare for the 2030 World Cup.”
“It is shameful that some countries that are not up to Lagos qualified easily. I heard that they are preparing to return for another term. It is an insult to the whole nation. If the president allows them to go for another term, we have accepted defeat. And if they are not resigning, I am ready to go to court to force them out, for capable people to take over.
“They have to leave for others to take precaution. In fact, it should be “fail and fail out”. If it is done that way, nobody would like to fail. It is unheard of that for eight years, Nigeria could not participate in the World Cup, the Under-20 team disgracefully crashed out of the underage World Cup, the Under 17 team could not qualify for World Cup, the Home Based Eagles were disgraced in CHAN, the Under 23 are not even in existence and we only have the senior female team, the Super Falcons which they did not make.
“With dint of hard work, they are ten time champions of Africa without the making of the present NFF. I travelled the other day and my friends were laughing at me, saying despite all our good players scattered all over the world, we cannot bring them together to achieve something. Does that not show that something drastic must be done?” Chukwuma querried.
