Remo Stars head coach and Super Eagles assistant, Daniel Ogunmodede, has spoken candidly about the lack of access to proper coaching education in Nigeria, calling it a systemic failure that has crippled grassroots football development.
In a recent media chat, Ogunmodede lamented that certified coaching courses, such as CAF licenses, had been unavailable in Nigeria for nearly a decade. The result, he says, is a generation of passionate yet uncertified coaches who are left out of the national conversation—not due to incompetence, but due to structural neglect.
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“It’s not the coaches, it’s the system,” he said. “We have men and women in grassroots football giving their all, working for as little as ₦50,000 a month. How can we expect them to afford UEFA or CAF courses that cost millions of dollars? It’s unrealistic.”
Ogunmodede pointed to his coaching journey, revealing that many of his colleagues have had to travel abroad or rely on rare, expensive private training. He believes that unless national and state football bodies step in to subsidize or make these courses more accessible, Nigerian football will continue to suffer at the developmental level.
“This is a country of over 200 million people. We have the talent, we have the passion. What we lack is a clear pathway for coaches to grow professionally. If we want better footballers, we must invest in better coaches,” he added.
His comments come at a time when the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is reportedly working to reintroduce CAF certification programs nationwide. Ogunmodede welcomes the move but insists it must be continuous and affordable to have any lasting impact.
For now, his call serves as a stark reminder: Nigeria’s coaching problem isn’t a question of talent, but of opportunity—one the system must urgently address.
