Nigeria’s Super Falcons football team are true history-makers. They achieved their incredible “Mission X” – what Champions League-winning Real Madrid dubbed “La Décima” in 2014 – by winning their tenth Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON). This remarkable feat represents a dominance unmatched in any continental sport: men’s or women’s. The Super Falcons have won all 10 finals that they have reached (including the hard-fought 2016 1-0 victory over Cameroon in the hostile cauldron of Yaoundé’s Stade Omnisport).
They have never failed to make it to the semi-final in 13 editions of the biennial competition played since 1998. Equatorial Guinea (2008 and 2012) and South Africa (2022) are the only other winners. The Super Falcons are also the only African team – men or women – to have played in nine World Cups.
Nigerian President, Bola Tinubu – who had reportedly personally approved the players’ allowances and bonuses, including the arrears, before the final – predictably rushed to embrace this victory, triumphantly receiving the Super Falcons at Aso Rock, and bestowing on each of the 24 players $100,000, three bedroom flats, and the Officer of the Order of the Niger national honour, as well as $50,000 each on 11 technical crew.
The president euphorically hailed the victory, telling the players: “the indomitable spirit of resilience, determination, and courage you displayed lifted the spirit of the entire nation,” while team captain, Rasheed at Ajibade, lyrically dedicated the triumph to “every young girl in our villages, towns and cities who dares to dream,” before calling for greater support for women’s football from Nigeria’s government and football federation.
The manner of Nigeria’s victory in the final against Morocco’s Atlas Lionesses – coached by Spanish women’s World Cup-winning coach, Jorge Vilda – in front of 21,000 stunned and subdued Moroccan fans in Rabat, was truly breathtaking. The Super Falcons were down 2-0 until the 64th minute, having conceded more goals in the first 24 minutes of this game than they had in the previous five matches of 450 minutes of playing time.
Showing incredible character, the Falcons somehow hauled themselves back from the edge of disaster, with a Player of the Match performance by AFC Toronto’s Esther Okoronkwo who scored a penalty, made the pass for the second goal by Liaoning Baiye’s Folashade Ijamilusi, and then fired the free kick for the Dutch-born Paris Saint-Germain’s Jennifer Echigini’s winning goal.
This was sweet revenge for the Atlas Lionesses’ victory over the Super Falcons in the controversial 2022 WAFCON semi-final (in which two Nigerian players were sent off), also in Morocco, attended by a record 45,562 spectators.
Nigeria’s swashbuckling, inspirational captain Atlético Madrid’s Rasheedat “Rash” Ajibade (who grew up in the tough streets of Mushin) led from the front, deservedly winning the Player of the tournament award along with three Player of the Match accolades. Her coach, Justin Madugu, proudly observed: “She has been carrying the team along with her energy and exemplary leadership on the field of play.” A deeply religious Ajibade noted, as the Falcons progressed in the competition: “The celebration will continue as long as the Lord is on the Throne.”
After a somewhat disjointed start in which the Super Falcons beat Tunisia’s Carthage Eagles 3-0, they defeated Botswana’s Zebras 1-0, and drew 0-0 with Algeria’s Desert Foxes in a dead rubber match, having already qualified and rested several star players. The Super Falcons finally soared in the quarter finals, trashing Zambia’s highly-fancied Copper Queens 5-0, a team that included reigning African Women’s footballer of the year, Barbra Banda. The hard-fought 2-1 semi-final victory against South Africa’s defending African champions, Banyana Banyana, was the sweetest victory for Nigerians against an arch-foe.
The Super Falcons had been able to blend the experience of veterans like Rasheedat Ajibade, Brighton’s Chiamaka Nnadozie (voted the Best Goalkeeper of the tournament), and the English-born Al-Ittihad’s Ashleigh Plumptre (with a Nigerian paternal grandfather), with WAFCON newcomers like the social media-savvy Yale-educated Houston Dash’s Michelle Alozie, as well as Esther Okoronkwo and AS Roma’s English-born Rinsola Babajide.
The Falcons’ 61-year old no-nonsense coach, Justin Madugu (with no prior international experience before this tournament), showed there would be no sacred cows by making the courageous decision to bench the six-time African Player of the Year and fading former Barcelona superstar, Asisat “Àgba Baller” (Legendary Footballer) Oshoala – a pioneer of the Nigeria Women Football League, alongside Ajibade and Ijamilusi – restricting her mostly to cameo appearances.
Madugu remained calm throughout the tournament, trusting his Falcons to take care of business. His half-time pep talk as Nigeria trailed Morocco 2-0 in the final lifted his players’ spirits and inspired this epic comeback, even as Nigeria’s teeming fans had given up on what most considered a Lost Cause. As Madugu confirmed: “we kept encouraging the players not to lose their belief. If they didn’t have mental resilience they would have given up. We did a lot of talking at half-time.”
But, as sweet as this triumph was, it was achieved despite rather than because of the notoriously nefarious maladministrators at the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) who arranged very few international friendlies for the Super Falcons in the eight months leading up to WAFCON. The federation has often refused to pay bonuses, and the salary of the team’s former American coach, Randy Waldrun, went unpaid for 14 months, despite taking the Super Falcons to the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand (where they came within a whisker of defeating eventual finalists, England’s Lionesses, in a pulsating round of 16 encounter) and the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The dedicated coach, who was fiercely devoted to his Super Falcons, exposed the gross dysfunction of Nigerian football administration, imploring last year before departing the role: “If we invest in this team, as a federation and a country, this team would have a chance to be one of the best in the world.”
The NFF has overseen the total neglect of Nigeria’s most famous stadia in Lagos, Ibadan, and Abuja, and – as with the men’s national team – relied for success on the professional culture in the clubs of mostly foreign-based Falcons players, rather than on its own foresight or planning. More broadly, it was sad to see so many empty seats at WAFCON in matches not involving the Moroccan hosts, even at the blockbuster Nigeria v South Africa semi-final. Much more investment in clubs, players, grassroots development, and stadia are still therefore required to achieve the teeming crowds witnessed during the Women’s Euros in Switzerland which took place at the same time as WAFCON.
Finally, amidst the celebrations, important questions of equity must also be posed to the South African, Patrice Motsepe-led Confederation of African Football (CAF): why has Morocco been assigned the hosting of three consecutive WAFCON tournaments, including the next one in 2026?
Why has the North African country simultaneously been awarded the hosting of the next men’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in 2025/2026? Why is a country that belatedly withdrew from hosting AFCON in 2015 due to deep prejudice about cases of Ebola in three West African countries, and was subsequently suspended and fined by CAF, being so generously rewarded?
One can only hope that African football is not relapsing into the era of graft-ridden favouritism and skulduggery witnessed during the autocratic Cameroonian, Issa Hayatou’s two-decade misrule.
Professor Adebajo is a senior Research Fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship in South Africa.
