2025 has been quite a successful year for Nigeria’s female athletes. Our women’s football team, the Super Falcons, won the Women’s African Cup of Nations (WAFCON) for the 10th time, further cementing their place in history. Just a few weeks later, our national women’s basketball team, D’Tigress, would win the FIBA 2025 AfroBasket competition for the fifth year in a row. Their victory in the final was their 29th win in a row, and the team now sits in the top 10 of national women’s basketball teams around the world. The only African country currently in the top 10.
The women’s football team have now won 10 out of the 13 WAFCON competitions that have been held, displaying their absolute dominance in African women’s football. These are amazing accomplishments that Nigerians are very proud of. Such accomplishments will always be reasons for celebration. However, the actions taken by the Nigerian government as part of these celebrations are a prime example of the misplaced priorities that exist among our political leadership. As the athletes arrived in Abuja for celebrations, they were promised large sums of money by President Tinubu.
The President promised to give each player of both the national football and Basketball teams 100,000 US Dollars. Meaning on the women’s football team, the squad of 24 players would receive 2.4 million US Dollars, which amounts to around 3.5 trillion Naira. That is the sum that has now been promised to only the women’s football team by the president. In addition to promising the basketball team players 100,000 US Dollars each, the president also promised members of the D’Tigress coaching and technical staff 50,000 US Dollars each, along with their very own flat.
The President is making this commitment to shell out trillions of Naira to these athletes while at the same time presiding over the worst economy ever experienced in Nigeria’s history. Over the course of Tinubu’s presidency, the Naira has been among the worst-performing currencies in the world. Since Tinubu’s 29th May inauguration, the Naira has lost around three times its value, exacerbating the terrible economic conditions felt by Nigerians. How can one justify dishing out trillions of Naira to these athletes, while millions are facing poverty across the country?
It is truly mind-boggling to imagine that such a commitment could even be made in the first place. This comes just weeks after the World Food Program (WFP) had to cease its operations in the Northeast due to a lack of funding. The WFP explicitly warned that around 30 million Nigerians in the Northeast are currently at risk of starvation due to their withdrawal from the region. The government undoubtedly should be aware of the starvation crisis that is currently underway in the Northeast that those trillions of Naira could be of use in.
It is also worth pointing out that the reason the WFP has had to withdraw from the Northeast region of Nigeria is, in large part, due to the funding cuts to foreign aid that the Trump administration has put in place in the United States. So, rather than it being the Nigerian government that has led in providing food assistance in the Northeast, instead, the WFP funding has mostly come from Western governments and Japan over the years. Now, with that funding drying up and the hunger crisis worsening, the federal government is instead handing millions of dollars to these athletes.
This starvation crisis unfolding in the Northeast is just one of many major issues that are affecting Nigerians. Insecurity continues to be a major issue impacting millions around the country. The WFP reports that around 2.3 million people have been displaced in the Northeast due to insecurity. On the second anniversary of President Tinubu’s inauguration, Amnesty International came out with a report noting that around 10,000 Nigerians have been killed by armed groups in Tinubu’s two years in power.
Borno State and Plateau States had been the states with the most deaths reported by Amnesty International. Amnesty International’s reports explicitly put the blame for the large number of deaths at the hands of the Nigerian government for failing to protect civilians. One would think that maybe those millions of dollars could instead be directed towards Nigeria’s security services, in the fight against armed groups operating across the entire country; but the government feels these athletes are more deserving of it rather than the vulnerable communities across the country.
Another glaring area that money could rather be invested in is in Nigeria’s failing infrastructure. The vast majority of Nigerians do not live with a constant stream of electricity. Or how about the country’s road network? Or the fact that there aren’t any kind of centralised water treatment facilities in most places across the country? What does it say about the state of our government when all these issues go unaddressed while trillions are being given out to a group of athletes? The government is at the end of the day supposed to exist to serve the people of Nigeria.
These are not the actions of a government that truly cares about the wellbeing of its citizens.
