Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) has disowned a letter circulating in sections of the media and purported to have come from FIFA, while confirming that football’s world governing body has already accepted the resignations of the federation’s former principal officers and Executive Committee members.
The Federation made the clarification on its official X handle on Tuesday, as uncertainty continues to surround the federation following the mass resignation of its top officials.
The federation said the letter in circulation did not come from FIFA and should not be treated as an official communication from the world governing body.
At the same time, however, it disclosed that FIFA had already accepted the resignations, with engagement between the two sides still ongoing.
That confirmation is the more significant part of the development.
NFF President Ibrahim Musa Gusau, General Secretary Mohammed Sanusi and members of the Executive Committee resigned on August 27 after mounting pressure over the state of Nigerian football. The resignations followed Nigeria’s failure to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup and the Super Falcons’ historic failure to reach the 2027 Women’s World Cup.
The Falcons’ failure ended Nigeria’s record of appearing at every edition of the Women’s World Cup since the competition began in 1991, while the Super Eagles have now missed successive editions of the men’s World Cup.
The leadership shake-up also came only weeks before the NFF’s scheduled elective congress on September 27 in Lafia, raising questions over how the federation will be managed through the transition and what happens to the planned electoral process.
The latest NFF statement does not provide details of the ongoing engagement with FIFA or spell out what arrangements will follow the resignations.
It does, however, draw an important line between what has actually happened and what is being claimed in the circulating document: FIFA has accepted the resignations, but the letter now making the rounds is not from FIFA.
For Nigerian football, attention now shifts from the departures themselves to what comes next, as the federation enters a period in which questions of leadership, governance and the next electoral steps are likely to dominate the conversation.
The NFF’s clarification is therefore less about reversing the leadership change than about correcting the record surrounding FIFA’s position while discussions on the way forward continue.
