Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu on Monday (July 28, 2025) hosted and splashed items on the triumphant nationwide women’s football team, who overcame poor preparations and lacking funds to win their record-extending tenth Women’s Africa Cup of Nations title.
The Super Falcons’ comeback 3-2 victory over host Morocco in Saturday’s thrilling remaining was applauded by Tinubu and plenty of in Nigeria, a football-loving nation the place ardour and arduous work typically triumphs over institutional challenges.
The continental success, analysts say, papers over the mismanagement of the ladies’s team by the nation’s authorities. The success of the nation had come despite the nation.
“They have been able to dominate even though the Nigerian football authorities do not put as much funding, care, attention, and planning into the way the women’s national team is run,” Solace Chukwu, a Lagos-based football analyst, instructed The Associated Press.
Underfunding, corruption
The team had been owed match bonuses for years, as soon as leading to a coaching boycott in 2022. Even as they triumphed on the way in which to the finals in Morocco, the backlog of funds was solely authorised by the president days earlier than Saturday’s remaining. They additionally couldn’t maintain aggressive pleasant matches and their coaching kits had been mentioned to not have been accessible.
It is a typical downside in Nigeria the place sporting competitions are sometimes dogged by problems with underfunding, corruption and mismanagement which have led to high-profile scandals leading to athletes selecting to symbolize different international locations in protest.
Women’s groups are affected essentially the most, partly due to how ladies have at all times been seen within the Nigerian society, in accordance to Oluwashina Okeleji, a sport analyst with concentrate on Africa.
“The argument from the (Nigerian) federation is that the men bring more money than the women, but the truth is the women bring most prestige, honours and titles to Nigeria,” Okeleji mentioned.
A spokesperson for the Nigeria Football Federation, the nation’s governing football physique, declined to reply to the allegations.
Dominance
The Nigerian women’s team has exercised a near-total dominance in African football, which is partly credited to a head-start within the women’s recreation. Nigeria created the primary football league for ladies in 1978, years earlier than their counterparts on the continent.
However, the good points haven’t catapulted the team to related achievements on the worldwide stage in what analysts say is a failure of the authorities to capitalize on this early benefit.
“The men’s team is huge generally within the administration of Nigerian football as the cash cow,” Chukwu mentioned.
The items now promised by the president, together with cash and property, haven’t satisfied the followers.
“This one-time cost and residence doesn’t make any sense. For what? What they want is funding within the services, the employees, and cost. The lack of funding in women’s football is without doubt one of the the reason why it isn’t as prime quality as the boys’s,” Funmi Obasa, a football fan in Abuja who follows the women’s team, told AP.
