Ajuma Otache, a Super Falcons midfielder, has died. She was aged 33.
According to the verified Twitter handle of the National Football Federation, @thenff, Otache died on Saturday.
The NFF expressed sadness at the news of her death and sympathised with her young family.
Otache won the 2014 African Women Cup of Nations with the Super Falcons.
Details later…
Nigerian Super Falcons welcomed Holland-based Sophia Omodiji, Cyprus-based Ngozi Ebere as well as the home-based players invited for the team friendly match against France on Friday.
The players arrived on Wednesday night to complete the squad of 18 players invited by coach Thomas Dennerby for the high-profile friendly.
The Super Falcons twitter handle also revealed that the team will be having two training sessions before the game tomorrow.
The Super falcons first training session will come up by 10am France time at the Le Clos Fleuri ground while the second session will take place at MmArena by 6pm on Thursday.
The team tweet also reads, “With the arrival of Holland-based Sophia Omidiji and Cyprus-based Ngozi Ebere, we now have a full house of 18 players in camp at the Mecure Hotel ahead of Friday’s friendly against France
Complete Sports
The Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) on Thursday announced the appointment of a top Swedish football coach, Thomas Dennerby, to take the role of head coach of the Nigeria national women’s team, Super Falcons, the federation announced Thursday.
The contract allows Dennerby to come into the job with an assistant, Jorgen Petersson, who is a highly experienced Swedish coach nominated by Dennerby.
Dennerby, who spent nine years with Hammarby IF of Allsvesnkan and played in the European Cup in 1983 and 1985, won 34 caps for Swedish junior teams between 1975 and 1981.
He coached the Swedish Women’s Senior Team between 2005 and 2012, during which the team played at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics and the 2007 and 2011 FIFA World Cup finals, winning bronze at the later tournament.
He also served as youth coach for Stockholm FA and worked in various capacities for former club Hammarby between 1993 and 2001.
More recently, he did scouting and analyses for the Swedish FA at the 2013 and 2017 European Championships, the 2016 Olympics and the 2015 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada.
Petersson has worked with several top Swedish clubs including Moheda IF, Osters IF, Vaxjo, Alvesta Golf, IFK Varmamo, Malmo FF, Kalmar FF and Linkopings FC, was assistant coach of the Swedish U23 women team between 2006-2012 and scouted for the Swedish women national team at last year’s European Championship.
The appointment is in line with the pledge made by NFF president, Amaju Pinnick, to get a world –class coach to take the Super Falcons and other women national teams to the next level (of competing creditably and for laurels at global championships), and who would also work assiduously with the federation to ensure robust development of women football in Nigeria.
Pinnick expressed delight that the process had gone smoothly and assured the coaches of a conducive working environment to achieve the set milestones.
“The NFF decided to go for a coach of the calibre of Thomas Dennerby for three reasons: to sustain and enhance the Super Falcons’ dominance on the African scene; to take the Falcons and the other women teams to the next level of challenging for laurels at global competitions like the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup and; to generally lay the foundation for the real development of women’s football in our country,” Shehu Dikko, NFF 2nd Vice President/Chairman of Strategy, told thenff.com.
Dikko added: “Dennerby will live in Nigeria most of the time and support the other women teams whenever he has the time. The contract is until the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo in the initial, with the right for automatic renewal subject to meeting performance milestones as agreed. He will be in Nigeria very soon for the public unveiling.
“The NFF Technical and Development Committee has already shortlisted three Nigerians to work with Messrs Dennerby and Petersson as assistant coaches and goalkeeper trainer. These three will resume work soon to start preparing the team for the upcoming WAFU Cup of Nations in Cote d’Ivoire pending the resumption of Dennerby and Petersson,” he said.
The three coaches who will work with Dennerby and Petersson will be announced soon.
Despite not having a coach at the moment Nigeria’s women’s team will play France in a friendly on 4 April in Paris.
The African Champions are still searching for a coach after American Randy Waldrum rejected the opportunity to lead the team last month.
April’s match for the Super Falcons will be their first since winning the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in December 2016.
“We have signed a contract for a friendly match with the women’s national team of France for 4th April 2018 in Paris,” Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) president Amaju Pinnick confirmed in a statement.
The match should prove a good test for the Super Falcons after France beat Ghana 8-0 in an October friendly.
Pinnick also revealed that the NFF will announce a permanent manager in a ‘few weeks’ to succeed Florence Omagbemi in the role.
“It is unfortunate that the coach (Randy Waldrum) we had contacted and approved for the Super Falcons’ job opted for something else before the contract was signed, but that is water under the bridge and we have moved on,” said Pinnick.
“In a few weeks, we will unveil a highly qualified Coach for the team and we will then take it from there.”
The first challenge before the new manager will be the west African regional championship, the Wafu Women’s Cup, in Ivory Coast scheduled for 10-24 February.
After that focus will switch to securing a qualifying spot at the 2018 Africa Women Cup of Nations in Ghana as they aim to retain their continental title.
The biggest challenge will be to seal qualification for the 2019 Fifa Women’s World Cup in France – in what could be Nigeria’s eighth record appearance at the tournament.
Nigeria are the only African team to have played in all of the Women’s World Cup tournaments since 1991.
However they have failed to translate their continental dominance on the world stage, their best performance came in the USA in 1999 when they reached the quarter-finals.
BBC Sports
The Nigeria Football Federation President, Amaju Pinnick has revealed that the country’s national female team, the Super Falcons will be busy in 2018.
The NFF boss has already confirmed that the reigning African Queens will play France in an international friendly on April 4, 2018.
Pinnick who refuted claims that the Federation has chosen to neglect the women team also disclosed that efforts are currently been intensified to get the Falcons another credible opponent during the free window when they are playing France.
“The France friendly billed for April is already confirmed, we have signed so everything is in place, we are also working to see if we can get another team so they can have something like a double-header.” The NFF boss disclosed.
The Super Falcons after their conquest at the last AWCON in 2016 were rendered inactive all through the outgoing 2017 year.
American coach Randy Waldrum has turned down to offer to coach Nigeria’s senior women’s national team, Super Falcons.
The NFF had named the former Trinidad and Tobago gaffer as the technical adviser for the Super Falcons in October after his application for the job, and subsequent recommendation by the NFF technical committee, though subject to further negotiations.
It is the second time in 18 months an expatriate will reject a coaching offer from the NFF after Frenchman Paul Le Guen declined to handle the Super Eagles in June 2016.
However, reports say Waldrum has been named the head coach of the University of Pittsburgh women’s soccer team after the 61-year-old declined further negotiations.
“We are thrilled to announce Randy Waldrum as our head women’s soccer coach at the University of Pittsburgh,” said Pitt’s director of Athletics, Heather Lyke on the team’s website.
While confirming his acceptance, Waldrum said: “I would like to thank Heather Lyke for giving me this wonderful opportunity to lead the women’s soccer program at the University of Pittsburgh.”
The NFF were in communication with Waldrum and had expected the gaffer to land in Nigeria on Wednesday having sorted his flight and visa fees.
But on Tuesday, he suddenly wrote the NFF to communicate them on his new job with Pitt and no longer interest in the Nigerian offer.
Waldrum was former US U23 women coach and Trinidad and Tobago women’s coach for two years before he was relieved of his post. He also coached US National Women’s Soccer League side Houston Dash before he was sacked following a poor run of results.
Since Florence Omagbemi led the Super Falcons to African Women’s Cup of Nations glory in December 2016, the team are yet to regroup and since been without a substantive coach.
By Reno Omokri
On Friday the 9th of December, 2016, a bewildered nation woke up to read the news that the Nigerian government did not expect its own team, the Super Falcons, to win the African Women’s Cup of Nations.
Said the minister of sport, Solomon Dalung, “don’t forget that nobody even knew the team will emerge victorious. If we were confident they will emerge victorious, all the federation would have done is to plan for the process of participation and entitlement.”
Nigerians have already come to expect such pedestrian speech from a minister who once said our footballers were too hungry to go for the World Cup, but we never expected the beret wearing minister to go so low to prove to us that he is bereft of ideas. We already knew that!
Going into the AWCoN, the Super Falcons were the defending champions and even beyond that they had won seven of the last AWCoNs consecutively.
Now it beats my imagination that the minister would say that he and his ministry did not expect a team that had already won the seven previous editions to win the eighth!
That would be like saying you did not expect your eight month pregnant wife to deliver even though she had lived with you for seven unbroken months of pregnancy prior to the eighth month.
I began pondering about the statement from the minister of sports and I cannot believe that a member of the Executive Council of the Federation can operate from such a low mentality.
The more I thought of his words, the more I believed that the minister was not speaking literally. I am beginning to suspect he was speaking in parables.
In my opinion, Dalung’s speech is a classic case of what is called projection in psychology. The federal government is projecting itself onto the Falcons. The Buhari administration never expected to win in 2015 and so they never prepared to govern. That is why it took the President eight months after his victory to pick ministers like Solomon Dalung.
Even more annoying is the threat to ban the girls for life for complaining about their unpaid allowances. Thank God that the public backlash to this information caused the Nigerian Football Federation to quickly deny such madness!
And do you know the funny thing? Around the period Mr. Dalung was making his callous statement, President Paul Biya of Cameroon was hosting the Indomitable Lionesses, Cameroon’s team to the AWCoN, whom the Super Falcons beat, to emerge victorious. President Paul Biya’s office released photos of him taking selfies with the girls and celebrating them.
The Indomitable Lionesses were celebrated, wined and dined and paid all their dues, while the Super Falcons were denigrated, used and dumped and owed all their dues!
And an even funnier thing is that a Nigerian state governor admitted on tape that he paid killer herdsmen not to kill his own citizens again yet the Nigerian state has no money to pay the victorious Super Falcons! Obviously, the Falcons are in the wrong business!
Some of them may now cast their mind back to the President’s statement that his wife belongs to his ‘other rooms’. Maybe he is punishing the Super Falcons for having the audacity not to be be confined to the ‘other rooms’!
Again, let me remind the All Progressive Congress led federal government that propaganda can get you to power, but only proper agenda can make you a success while in power!
Beyond the sloganeering and mouthing of the word ‘change’, what is the agenda of this government? What is their policy?
What has happened to the Super Falcons is merely one in a series of behaviors that betray the fact that a government which spent its electioneering period painting its predecessor as clueless is itself beyond clueless.
A government that says it wants to attract foreign investment and yet dilly dallies on its economic policy. In a dizzying roller coaster ride of unpredictability, the government first pegged, then floated then acted as if it did not float the currency. Next it began arresting Bureau de Change operators, then it bans what it had unbanned and unbanned what it had banned and all the while foreign investors are watching Nigeria with amazement!
If anybody is telling the President that foreign investors are going to come to Nigeria under this present system of policy uncertainty, that person is his worst enemy.
The fact that the President is using the very same policies that failed him so woefully in 1984 in 2016 is proof positive that some people grow old but they do not grow up!
Look at former President Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military dictator like President Buhari, who also found his way back to power as a civilian leader.
The same Obasanjo who as a military president nationalized British Petroleum in 1979 is the same President Obasanjo who privatized it and sold it off as African Petroleum to Femi Otedola in his second coming.
Why did President Obasanjo make a 360 degree turn from nationalization to privatization? Because, as an intellectual, he knows that times change and people must change with the times. President Buhari badly needs a tutorial on this principle!
Rather than focus his attention on the challenges he is facing, the President is hell bent on coming up with new and creative ways to blame his predecessors especially former President Jonathan.
Real leaders do not blame. They correct what went wrong and prevent it from reoccurring. Blaming signifies helplessness. As the late Maya Angelou once said ‘if you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude to it.’
President Buhari can take charge or make blame but he cannot do both! The more he blames his predecessors, the more he surrenders his authority to them. Jonathan must be very influential if eighteen months after leaving office he is still the talk on the lips of President Buhari.
In America meanwhile, Donald Trump has not even been sworn in but he has already turned his attention away from Hillary. eighteen months after President Buhari is still on Jonathan! How can the nation move forward when the leader has not moved on?
If President Muhammadu Buhari and anyone else thinks what Dr. Goodluck Jonathan did by conceding when votes had not yet been fully tallied was not remarkable, they only have to look to The Gambia. There were grounds for the man fondly known as GEJ to contest the result. The margin by which he lost was not much (15 million to 13 million). Yet he loved his country enough to chose to concede! And while I am at this, let me say to Mr. Yahya Jammeh: please take a cue from Dr. Jonathan and spare your nation bloodshed and turmoil. Do not be like those who believe that elections are only fair if they win.
The interesting thing about the Jammeh episode is that President Buhari is, as I write this, in Gambia to urge Jammeh to accept defeat. Does President Buhari himself know how to accept defeat? Three times he was defeated and three times he refused to concede. What will he tell Jammeh when Jammeh reminds him of his history? What moral authority does he have to preach to Jammeh? Even if he says 2003 and 2007 were rigged, what about 2011 which was one of our most transparent elections? Did he concede? By going to Gambia, President Buhari only strengthens Yahya Jammeh’s argument.
Look at the behavior of INEC under President Buhari. I daresay that Gambia’s electoral commission is by far better than Buhari’s INEC.
As Junaid Mohammed said in July, “Buhari decided to nominate his own niece, the daughter of his elder sister- Amina Zakari. She has been there; when Jega left, Buhari was determined to make her chairman, it was because of the massive backlash that he dropped the idea like hot potatoes. As we are talking today, that woman is a national commissioner which means she is one of the principal election umpires. Throughout my reading of history, political science and social sciences generally, I have never heard of any dictator or any tyrant under any system of government whether totalitarian or fascist, appointing his own niece to conduct elections in which he was either a party or going to be a party to.”
And this same President Buhari went to Gambia to ask Jammeh to concede to the winner. I just hope Jammeh has not heard of Junaid Mohammed because if he copies what Mr. Mohammed just described above then we would be having another Mugabe on our hands.
But on a serious note, the Super Falcons won AWCoN. Has Nigeria conceded their victory allowance to them? Even the money that the President spent flying to Gambia would have been better spent paying the Falcons.
As I conclude, let me remind Nigerians of the Law of Attraction. A leader attracts subordinates who are like him. Look at the people that President Obasanjo attracted around him, look at the people President Jonathan attracted and now look at those around President Buhari.
Do you feel confident that Nigerian sports will thrive under Solomon Dalung? Let me ask you a honest question, if you had a poultry, would you hire Solomon Dalung as your poultry manager? Yet this is the best hand that President Muhammadu could find to run our sports ministry after eights months of searching! Alas!
I could say the same thing about finance, agriculture, science and technology, heck all of them. But the truth is that the buck stops at the table of the President!
Reno Omokri is the founder of the Mind of Christ Christian Center in California, author of Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God and Why Jesus Wept and the host of Transformation with Reno Omokri.
Nigerian Football Federation has paid players and officials of the Super Falcons their outstanding allowances after receiving the money from the Federal Government on Friday.
NFF’s spokesman Ademola Olajire, made the disclosure yesterday in Abuja.
The statement quoted NFF’s Head of Women’s Football, Ruth David as saying, “the bank accounts of the players and officials are being credited as we speak.
“They will all receive credit alerts of the monies due to them, as released by the government, before the end of the day.”
The payments were for the Super Falcons’ participation at the 10th Women Africa Cup of Nations finals, which the team won after defeating hosts Cameroon 1-0 in the final in Yaounde on 3rd December.
Olajire said the money released by the Federal Government included allowances due to players and officials of the Super Eagles for the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying match against Algeria, played in Uyo in November.
“A breakdown of the Super Falcons’ monies showed that each player got the sum of N5,494,500, less the sum of N600,000 that was earlier paid to each of the players at various times by the NFF.
“The amount is at the rate of $17,900 (converted to naira at the official rate of N305 to $1), plus the sum of N15,000 camp allowance and N20,000 transport allowance.
“All the monies were converted at the official rate of N305 to $1.
“Head Coach Florence Omagbemi got a total of N11,014,000 less the sum of N800,000 paid to her earlier.
“Assistant coaches Ann Chiejine, Perpetua Nkwocha and Bala Mohammed, as well as the backroom staff were N8,274,250 richer, less the N500,000 earlier paid to each of them.
“The equipment manager got a total of N4,114,625, less the N500,000 earlier paid to her,” the statement said.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the players protested following the failure of the NFF to pay their outstanding allowances.
On Wednesday they took their protest to the National Assembly where they were addressed by the Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, who promised them that they would be paid in 48 hours.
NAN correspondent who visited the Agura Hotel, where the players were lodged,,discovered that they had left the hotel. (
President Muhammadu Buhari has ordered the immediate payment of all outstanding allowances and bonuses being owed the Super Falcons, an official said on Wednesday in Abuja.
The Falcons had earlier on Wednesday embarked on a protest march against the non-payment of their allowances by the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF).
The footballers, who won the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (AWCON) for the eighth time in Cameroon, had initially refused to leave their hotel rooms at Agura Hotel in Abuja.
They had, upon returning from the competition which they won on Dec. 3, been waiting for the payment at the hotel where they were accommodated by the NFF.
But on Wednesday they staged a protest march, carrying various placards with inscriptions along the roads between the National Assembly and the secretariat gate of the Presidential Villa.
Speaking later, the Chief of Staff to President Buhari, Abba Kyari, told State House correspondents on Wednesday that the issue had been resolved.
He said government had since directed appropriate authorities to settle the players’ allowances and bonuses.
“The problem has been resolved. They have done us proud and we congratulated them. The Ministries of Sports and Finance have been directed to pay tomorrow (Thursday).
“I don’t know the details of the arrears. But they have been directed to pay,” the presidential aide said.
Kyari, who earlier spoke with the players on Wednesday during their protest march to the Aso Rock Villa gate, had urged them to return to their hotel rooms.
He had assured them that their outstanding payment would be settled within 24 hours.
The players, led by team captain Rita Chikwelu, had during the protest expressed their displeasure at the non-payment of their allowances and bonuses.
