Ibrahim Gusau has stepped down as president of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF), along with General Secretary Mohammed Sanusi and the entire NFF executive committee, as pressure mounted over the nation’s disappointing football results.
Gusau made his resignation announcement at a press conference on Thursday in Abuja, at the NFF headquarters. His tenure officially ends in 34 days time, after only 1 year in office following his September 2022 election, though he was gunning for a further four-year term at the now likely postponed elections set to take place next month.
The Nigerian football boss’s decision comes after significant demand for the NFF leadership to step down. “We feel it is important to see that as Nigerians, nobody is greater than this country,” he told reporters.
Gusau’s administration will step down just weeks after Nigeria failed to secure a qualification spot in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, as well as for the first time, failing to appear in next year’s Women’s World Cup. The Super Falcons finished bottom of their group at the African Women’s Cup of Nations last year after three losses in their final five games, reaching just the quarter-finals in Morocco. A 2-1 World Cup play-off defeat to South Africa saw them out entirely, the first time they haven’t qualified for the Women’s World Cup since the tournament’s inception in 1991.
Gusau also came under fire after a six-member fact-finding committee was established following the failures. It confirmed issues at administrative, technical, financial and developmental levels within Nigerian football. A key recommendation from the report was for a wholesale reform process and a better system to be put in place that would prevent such a large number of terms being held in succession by NFF delegates.
Gusau, though, defended his administration, with progress being made on coaching education, stable domestic football, officiating and infrastructural improvements among some of his list of positive contributions, not to forget AFCON and WAFCON success recently.
He confirmed his resignation as being a measure of freeing up space “for a full and clean process of reform”.
