As part of a major cabinet overhaul by President Bola Tinubu, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Sports Development was dissolved and restructured into the National Sports Commission (NSC) on October 23, 2024. This decision was intended to improve Nigeria’s sports industry and strengthen Nigeria’s outlook as a competitive nation during international competitions. It was also driven by the need to streamline government operations, cut administrative costs, reduce bottlenecks, and transfer sports governance to experienced sports technocrats. Veteran sports administrator Shehu Dikko was appointed as the chairperson to lead this newly independent commission and drive these structural reforms.
This is not the first of its kind. Nigeria’s history of sports governance is replete with a cycle of name change and restructuring. In the Guardian’s From ministry to NSC: No silver bullet for sports’ woes, the Guardian traces the many restructurings that the sector has experienced, starting with the 1962 establishment of the defunct National Sports Council (NSC), which was under the Federal Ministry of Labour.
In 1971, it became the National Sports Commission (NSC) while it attained ministerial status in 1975. In 1991, it was subsumed into the Federal Ministry of Sport and Development. In 1995, the NSC gave way yet again to the Ministry of Sports and Social Development. Again, in 2007, the Ministry of Sports and Social Development was abrogated, and the NSC was returned to manage sports in Nigeria. In 2015, the NSC was scrapped again, and the Ministry of Sports took over sports matters.
This repeated restructuring suggests that successive governments have often felt that administrative reorganisation will remedy the sector’s longstanding challenges. But the fact that we have not found a permanent institutional structure, even up until this current administration, tells us that the deference to name change does not help. The return of the National Sports Commission in 2024 has not yielded any significant offerings either.
The establishment of the National Sports Commission (NSC) under President Tinubu has not stymied the administrative neglect and international embarrassments that have bedevilled Nigeria in sports. Nigeria’s recent failures post-Tinubu’s NSC are headlined by our catastrophic failure to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. In November 2025, the Super Eagles were officially eliminated after losing a grueling penalty shootout to the Democratic Republic of Congo in Rabat. The situation became derisive when it was revealed that the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF)’s official protest and appeal to FIFA against Congo (DRC) over player eligibility was thrown out without review because the federation failed to pay the basic 1,000 Swiss Francs filing fee and missed the deadline.
This competitive disaster was compounded by the scandal ahead of the match, where midfielder Alex Iwobi posted a viral video exposing their rundown lodging at the Rive Hotel, featuring broken windows and poor conditions that forced CAF to step in and upgrade the team’s base. During the September 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo, Nigerian contingents were given poor kits and gear for the tournament, as opposed to standard professional luggage which other contingents received.
In mid-2025, elite sprinter Favour Ofili switched nationalities to Turkey to save her career from negligent Nigerian officials, following her administrative exclusion from the Paris Olympics. This was closely followed in February 2026 by two-time national champion Favour Ashe, who moved to defect to Qatar due to abysmal training facilities and non-existent welfare.
The persistent decline of Nigerian sports is fundamentally an institutional and administrative failure which has outlived successive reforms, restructurings and name changes. Across the board, Nigeria and our many institutions and sectors have suffered from this same crisis of governmental and institutional failure. So, whether sport is administered by a ministry or a commission matters little if the underlying institution and institutional values that produce athletes, support competition and reward excellence remain deficient.
One of the clearest indicators of Nigeria’s failing sports ecosystem is that Nigeria does not produce its own talents, nor does it have a system to do so. As a nation, Nigeria depends heavily on athletes who owe their development to the structural facilities of other developed countries. Across athletics, basketball and football, many of Nigeria’s best-performing athletes were trained in foreign schools, universities, academies, and professional clubs. Nigeria often enters the process only at the point of international representation.
In athletics, World Record holder Tobi Amusan and premier sprinter Favour Ofili only attained elite standards after leaving Nigeria to join the rigorous collegiate training programs and state-of-the-art facilities at American universities like UTEP and LSU. Similarly, the successes of Nigeria’s basketball teams, D’Tigers and D’Tigress, are almost entirely built on the United States pipeline, with NBA and collegiate stars like Precious Achiuwa, Chimezie Metu, and the latest generation of top draft prospects owing their physical and tactical development to US high schools and the NCAA network.
Even among our celebrated football stars, key Super Eagles pillars like Alex Iwobi and Ademola Lookman are pure products of the English academy system — having been formatively shaped by Arsenal and Charlton Athletic respectively. Michelle Chinwendu Alozie was formatively trained and developed entirely within the elite youth club and collegiate sports infrastructure of the United States.
Nigeria rarely bears the financial burden of developing its sporting talent, investing little in talent identification, scouting and athlete development. Nigeria’s outsourcing of athlete development has two dangerous consequences. First, the country fails to build sustainable sporting institutions at home. Second, because many of these athletes were developed outside Nigeria and are often eligible to represent more than one country, they are understandably less willing to tolerate administrative incompetence. When confronted with poor welfare or other systematic problems or inadequate support, many have a viable alternative: to switch their sporting allegiance to another country that offers greater professionalism and stability in their careers.
Unfortunately, because successive governments have not invested substantially in developing elite athletes from their formative period, they also bear little political or financial cost when those athletes leave. Although the Nigerian state loses a representative, it has lost only little of the investment required to produce that athlete. In countries where governments spend years nurturing athletes through academies, scholarships and high-performance centres, losing a world-class competitor means losing millions of dollars and years of planning. In Nigeria, athlete migration is often merely treated as unfortunate publicity.
This dynamic breeds institutional complacency. Since many elite athletes arrive developed by foreign schools, clubs and training systems, there is little urgency to invest in the domestic structures that produce future champions. The incentive to build modern training facilities, establish grassroots academies, recruit and retain qualified coaches, or create long-term athlete development programmes is weakened because the state has become accustomed to relying on talent developed elsewhere.
This attitude has also brought about the death and decline of grassroots sports development. A country’s basket of athletes is a product of systems carefully designed for the identification and development of prospects. In successful sporting nations, the pathway to international success begins in schools, through local and regional competitions, specialised academies and high-performance centres, before ultimately feeding into the national team. In Nigeria, this pipeline has steadily deteriorated. And because the government has placed little to no value on parish-level sports, schools’ inter-house sports and other school competitions that served as breeding grounds for talent have become irregular or have disappeared altogether. As these competitions declined, so too did one of the country’s most reliable mechanisms for discovering future champions.
Nigeria’s deteriorating sporting infrastructure has further compounded the decline of its sports sector. Across the country, many stadiums, training grounds and sporting facilities are in a ruinous state. In 2023, The Guardian detailed the decline of the National Stadium in Surulere, Lagos, and even after a $1m facelift, the state stadium still fell into ruins. A great many other infrastructural facilities in Nigeria have suffered this fate. They are usually abandoned while allocations meant to either build new ones or maintain old ones are stolen. On the other hand, modern high-performance centres, sports science laboratories and rehabilitation facilities are scarce. Athletes are often forced to train under substandard conditions or seek better facilities abroad to reach their full potential.
It comes as no surprise that many of Nigeria’s sporting disappointments stem from a culture of weak governance and little accountability. Administrative failures have become recurring features of the country’s participation in international competitions: missed athlete registrations, poor logistical planning, delayed allowances, inadequate accommodation, and questionable spending.
Speaking recently, former Super Eagles captain Austin “Jay-Jay” Okocha revealed that members of Nigeria’s gold medal-winning football team at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics were forced to personally pay for basic necessities because of the Nigeria Football Federation’s administrative failures. According to Okocha, the federation failed to settle hotel bills, causing the team to receive little more than rice for lunch and dinner throughout the tournament. The team’s official training bus was also withdrawn after the Nigerian Football Association (NFA) (now, Nigerian Football Federation, NFF) failed to pay for it, forcing players to rent a minibus with their own money. They also had to finance several other services from their personal funds despite representing the country at one of its greatest sporting triumphs.
In 1989, Nigerian footballer Samuel Okparaji who died on the pitch while playing in a World cup qualifying match againsr Angola in Lagos, had decried his “poor treatment” by the Nigerian Football Association (NFA). He had complained of not being paid his allowances despite playing for the country. He would eventually suffer congestive heart failure at 25, in front of his fans and on his country soil, at the National Stadium, Surulere. These failures, however embarrassing and punishable, seldom result in meaningful investigations, disciplinary action or institutional reforms.
If sports in Nigeria is to improve, there must be real reforms that address the structural weaknesses of Nigerian sports. Priority should be given to rebuilding grassroots competitions, investing in modern sporting infrastructure, establishing regional high-performance centres, improving athlete welfare and creating transparent pathways for talent development from schools to the national team. Equally important is strengthening partnerships with the private sector to attract sustainable funding and reduce the sector’s dependence on government allocations.
Just as crucial is a commitment to accountability. Sports federations and administrators should be evaluated against clear performance benchmarks, while financial management and athlete welfare should be subject to regular independent audits. Administrative negligence of any form must attract real consequences.
Sports has long served as one of Nigeria’s most effective instruments of cultural diplomacy. At its peak, Nigerian sporting excellence put the country in a positive light for the world to see. News of our victories were so compelling that they fostered goodwill and national pride during periods when political instability and economic challenges dominated international headlines. The exploits of the Super Eagles in the 1994 FIFA World Cup and their historic gold medal at the 1996 Olympic Games, alongside the achievements of athletes such as Mary Onyali and Chioma Ajunwa and the dominance of D’Tigress in African basketball, defined Nigeria as a nation of talent, resilience and excellence. These victories gave Nigeria soft power prestige.
The country’s sporting decline has therefore come at a cost which we pay for with our depleting international image. Revitalising Nigerian sports is as much a matter of restoring our diplomatic reputation as it is of winning medals and trophies. As other African countries continue to leave their mark on the global stage through the ongoing World Cup, Nigeria must understand that if we are to reach a competitive level again, we must do the hard administrative work of building systems, nurturing talent, and holding those entrusted with sports administration accountable.
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