Former Super Eagles captain Austin Jay-Jay Okocha has highlighted the major issue he believes could undermine Nigeria’s 2025 AFCON campaign: the team’s lack of consistency.
Speaking ahead of the tournament in Morocco, Okocha stressed that Nigeria must confront the same problem that haunted them throughout the 2026 World Cup qualifiers.
Nigeria’s qualifying run was turbulent. The Super Eagles played ten matches, managing four wins, five draws and one defeat — a historic first-ever competitive loss to Benin Republic. But it was the dropped points at home to Lesotho and Zimbabwe that, according to many fans, exposed deeper weaknesses in performance and mentality.
Finishing behind South Africa meant Nigeria missed the automatic World Cup spot. Their hopes shifted to the intercontinental playoff pathway, where they needed to beat three lower-ranked African teams. After pushing past Gabon with a dramatic 4–1 extra-time win, Nigeria fell to DR Congo in a penalty shootout, ending their qualification dream.
That result confirmed a second straight World Cup absence, following the failure to reach Qatar 2022 — a bitter blow for a country rich in footballing talent and passion.
With AFCON 2025 now just weeks away, Okocha says the lessons from those failures must guide the team.
What Okocha said
“Nigeria’s qualifiers were a rollercoaster,” he told RG. “We would have preferred a more comfortable qualification campaign. Football isn’t easy, but the one area I think they must improve on is consistency.”
He added that the team must maintain a high level of performance from match to match:
“They need to stick to winning with top performance in every game.”
Nigeria were runners-up at the last AFCON in Côte d’Ivoire in 2023, restoring some confidence after missing the 2022 World Cup. Expectations for Morocco 2025 remain high, but the team — now drawn in Group C alongside Tunisia, Uganda and Tanzania — must overcome the unpredictability that has plagued them.
