As reflections continue over Nigeria’s inability to reach the semi-finals of this year’s Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON 2026) and subsequently failing to qualify for the next global showpiece, a call has come for less reliance by the team’s coach on players born abroad.
Sports247 reports that this verdict was delivered by a former head of the Nigeria Women Football League (NWFL), Nkechi Obi, who reasoned that players born and developed in the country would have stronger passion and determination to make the nation proud.
Obi, who also called for inward solutions to the current setbacks of Nigerian football, made her view known during the Hot Seat segment of Sports247’s television programme, Inside Naija Sports, which airs on NTA News24 and streams online via YouTube.
The sports marketing guru and resourceful administrator further called for better focus on mass-participation at the community level and improved quality of the domestic league in order to revive the fortunes of Nigeria’s national teams.
Obi asserted, “We need to flip the pyramid of our sports development focus. Instead of an upright pyramid that has elite athletes at the top, backed by a small number of officials and administrators, let’s turn things around.
“Let’s have the majority who are at the base get attention at the top, and gravity begins to move things naturally across all other levels. This format will also help us keep our best talent at home.
“The flipped pyramid structure will create an ecosystem built on raw talent and lead to proper utilisation of our natural resources, which will spread to all levels of the game.”
She went on with a bold declaration that the Super Eagles have suffered in recent years because the coaches rely mostly on foreign-grown players, who she believes their supporters cannot relate with on familiar terms.
“The only reason why our best footballers go abroad is that we have not developed the domestic league with proper standards. In England, it took a very horrific situation in which 97 people died for them to put things right.
“That’s how they put some rules in place that helped them to start the English Premier League. We now have our own ‘Seminar Moment,’ when we must ask ourselves how we can develop our own structure.
“I remember that the Falcons’ best moments were when most of our players were playing in the domestic league. But they have now adopted the same strategy as the men … bringing in players born abroad.
“I don’t have anything against Nigerian players born abroad, but that cannot be the right strategy for reviving our football. You cannot depend on other countries to train your players,” Obi stressed.
She concluded with an emphatic declaration that players born abroad cannot show the type of zeal and fighting spirit needed to eke out good results for both the women’s and men’s national teams, hence the need for homegrown talents.
Obi reiterated, “The local nuances, nationalist zeal and attachment to the fans are not there when most of your players are born abroad.
“For me, in particular, I cannot relate properly with the Super Eagles because I do not know where most of the players came from. The same thing is now happening to our Falcons.
“Only those who grew up here are the ones I know. How can you support your national team when you cannot identify with them? The players are also finding it difficult to adjust to our system. That’s not the right strategy for developing our national team.
“We need homegrown talent for us to get real commitment in the national team, and we must keep our players here at home for us to build our national teams, like South Africa is doing.”
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