MIKEL Obi has renewed his call for the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) hierarchy to resign following the failure of the Super Eagles to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The former Super Eagles captain was apparently stung by the side’s failure to scale through the African play-offs after being given another chance following their inability to get the automatic ticket at the group phase of the qualifiers.
Mikel, who won the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations with the Super Eagles and featured at the 2014 and 2018 World Cups, lashed out at the NFF and blamed the board for the back-to-back failure to reach the global tournament.
“Their job is to qualify for the World Cup and they failed. The corruption is incredible. The NFF President answers to people who put him there,” Mikel said on his Obi One podcast.
“You have to say stop. You have to rip up the whole corruption playbook.
“Enough is enough. Stop…take a break and just do the right thing. Football is the one thing that holds people together, that brings people together, whether you’re a Muslim or a Christian.
“The major tribes in Nigeria — Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo — the one thing that brings us together is football.
“That’s the one thing that we look forward to, the one thing we support together. We enjoy it together, we eat together, we drink together.
“It gives us joy. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the country, it doesn’t matter what the economic situation is. It doesn’t matter the suffering of the people; all that goes out the window when there’s football, when there’s the World Cup.”
The Super Eagles staged a training boycott on the eve of the African play-offs in Morocco over a pay row with the NFF, and Mikel believes a better run federation would have handled the qualifying process better.
“This NFF has deprived us of watching our team, our country on the biggest stage at the World Cup,” the former Chelsea midfielder, who also won bronze with Nigeria at the 2016 Olympics, noted.
“They have deprived us of that by mismanagement, corruption. Whichever way you look at it, they have.
“Now it’s another four years. We’ll say ‘let’s give them another chance’. No! Because it will be the same fu…ng result — failure.
“Because they don’t know how to do it. They have no idea how to do it. What they’re interested in is what comes into their pockets. That’s what they’re interested in and that has to stop.”
Mikel insists there is no plausible to keep the current NFF hierarchy in the federation if Nigeria is serious about improving the country’s football fortunes.
He said: “They’re going to keep failing. They had a job to do: get to the World Cup. And they messed it up. Their job is to take the country, the team to the World Cup, and they failed. They have absolutely failed.”
“I said it, if we do not qualify for the World Cup, the NFF, the whole board has to go. They have to go, because you can’t keep repeating the same mistake every time and thinking something is going to change. It’s just going to be the same results.
“If you have the same people doing the same thing and failing all the time, and you give them one more time, no.”
Mikel was sad that Nigerian fans have been robbed of the chance to watch their biggest star Victor Osimhen in the world’s prime football showpiece.
“It’s a shame that you can’t see a striker in his prime, absolutely on fire, not going to be in the World Cup,” he stressed.
“Haaland knew about it. Twenty-eight years or 30 years, they haven’t been in the World Cup? He knows. As one of the best strikers in the world, he has to be in the World Cup.
“He has to be, because that’s where he belongs. Competing in the World Cup, on the biggest stage. On the biggest stage, yeah. On the biggest stage, that’s where he belongs.
“And it’s a shame that we can’t see our best striker in Africa be in that biggest stage, competing, showcasing his talents, scoring goals for our country, for our nation, Africa, Nigeria.
“Two times in a row … it’s a disaster.”
The Super Eagles also failed to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar after losing in the play-offs to Ghana.