World Cup qualifiers: Sack NFF if Super Eagles fail to pick a ticket, Mikel fumes about Nigeria’s slim chance

By Ben Efe 11.9.2025
Nigerian football fans may not be seeing their Super Eagles at the 2026 World Cup and should that happen, John Mikel Obi has canvassed for the sack of the Nigeria Football Federation board.
The Super Eagles need to win their last two games against Lesotho and Benin Republic next month and pray other result go their way to qualify for the playoffs. They are currently perched at third in the group C pairings with 11 points while South Africa top the group with 17 points, Benin with points are second.
Speaking on his podcast ObiOne Mikel who captained the Super Eagles to the 2018 World Cup said it would be a disaster if the teams miss a back-to-back World Cup having faltered against Ghana in the play-offs for the Qatar 2022 tournament.
“If Nigeria doesn’t qualify for the World Cup, the entire NFF board has to go… it’s unacceptable,” said.
“We didn’t qualify for Qatar — the last World Cup — and now it looks like again we are not going to make it. Honestly, I have nothing to say about it.
“The people that run our football back home in Nigeria need to be accountable for what’s happening. They have no clue what it’s like to get a top football player that plays in Europe to be able to perform.”
He said that much as he blames the players, but he wondered if the right conditions were created to get the best out of them.
“Yes, I’ll blame the players but it starts from the top. What do you do as a Federation to make the players perform the way they perform with their clubs?
“They are motivated the way they perform at their football club. Do you make the environment comfortable for them to perform? Do you provide for them what they need to perform?
“I look at them sometimes, they don’t look motivated because the surrounding and everything around it is not right.
“I was there for so many years, I know what’s going on, and I know how those things can be fixed very easily.
“You need to have the right people running our football in Africa, especially the Nigerian national team.”