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Nigeria’s Super Falcons will now be decamped following the postponement of the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, The Eastern Updates reports.
Justine Madugu’s side returned to the country on Wednesday after playing two friendlies against the Indomitable Lionesses of Cameroon in Yaoundé last week.
The African champions were initially expected to head to Morocco for the final phase of their preparations.
The players have now dispersed to their different clubs after the Confederation of African Football (CAF) rescheduled the tournament for July.
CAF, however, remains silent on the country that will host the biennial competition.
The Super Falcons are drawn in Group C with Malawi, Zambia, and Egypt.
Nigeria’s football federation has confirmed participation in a four-nation friendly tournament in Amman next month, a scheduling decision that carries no formal announcement of resignation from the pending FIFA dispute against DR Congo — but whose timing, in the window reserved for World Cup intercontinental playoffs, has left little room for alternative interpretation.
The Nigeria Football Federation’s Director of Communications, Ademola Olajire, announced Friday that the Super Eagles would compete in a Four-Nation Invitational Tournament in Jordan during the FIFA international window of March 26 to April 1, the same period in which the intercontinental playoff matches in Mexico are scheduled. Nigeria will face Iran on March 27 at the 17,000-capacity Amman International Stadium and meet hosts Jordan on March 31 at the same venue. Costa Rica and Jordan round out the four-team lineup.
The federation made no reference to possible playoff participation in its announcement. Shehu Dikko, Chairman of the National Sports Commission, framed the situation with unusual candour when speaking to journalists at the State House in Abuja on Thursday. “The World Cup is a closed chapter,” he said, “but yes, we have a pending legal issue to deal with.”
That legal issue has consumed Nigerian football for three months without resolution. The NFF filed a formal petition with FIFA on December 15, 2025, alleging that DR Congo fielded ineligible players during the African playoff final played in Rabat the previous month, a match Nigeria lost 4-3 on penalties, ending their direct qualification campaign. The NFF’s complaint centred on several DR Congo players, among them Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Axel Tuanzebe, who the federation argues held or recently held European passports, in potential conflict with DR Congo’s domestic law, which does not recognise dual citizenship for adults. The NFF contended that DR Congo may have provided FIFA with incomplete or misleading documentation when seeking clearance for those players and asked for DR Congo to be disqualified, with the playoff result reversed in Nigeria’s favour.
The Congolese federation, through Director of Football Hérita Ilunga, argued that FIFA’s definition of sporting nationality, not domestic citizenship law, governs eligibility, and urged Nigeria to “accept the result on the pitch.” DR Congo’s official X account published a post reading: “If you can’t win on the pitch, don’t try to win from the back door. The World Cup has to be played with dignity and confidence, not with lawyers’ tricks.”
The legal distinction at the heart of the dispute is not trivial. FIFA’s eligibility framework permits players to switch international allegiance under defined conditions, primary among them a genuine connection to the country they represent, established through birth, parental or grandparental lineage, or a period of residency. Whether a player’s domestic citizenship status under their country of representation’s own laws has any binding effect on FIFA eligibility is a question the governing body has not definitively resolved in previous rulings, and the Nigeria case may produce the most significant precedent on the issue in years. Even if FIFA finds procedural violations, the remedy it applies may not necessarily be the match forfeiture Nigeria is seeking, the governing body has historically applied severe sanctions only in clear and demonstrable cases of fraud.
Read Also: Super Eagles’ 2026 World Cup Dream Ends In Penalty With DRC
The timeline of the ruling has repeatedly confounded expectations. Reports emerged that FIFA’s disciplinary committee was scheduled to deliver a decision on February 16. That date passed without any official announcement. Unconfirmed reports circulating online on February 16 claimed FIFA had ruled in Nigeria’s favour, prompting the NFF to issue an explicit denial.
“There is no decision from FIFA at this time. Any claims that a ruling has been made are false. FIFA has not communicated any verdict to the NFF or the Congolese federation,” Olajire said. FIFA’s recently published CAS and Football Annual Report 2025, released this week, made no mention of the Nigeria-DR Congo dispute, an omission that itself became the subject of commentary among Nigerian football journalists.
Dikko, speaking Thursday, confirmed the matter remained before FIFA’s independent disciplinary bodies. “The relevant bodies of FIFA are dealing with it, and we are hoping any moment we will hear their decisions,” he said. He added: “When they finish, they will tell the world.” He expressed confidence in the substance of Nigeria’s case while making clear the federation was not holding its breath for a particular outcome. “We are confident we have a good case. But I keep saying, we have put the World Cup behind us already.”
The consequences of the absence are significant by any historical measure. Should the petition fail and DR Congo proceed, Nigeria will have missed consecutive World Cup tournaments for the first time in the country’s football history, absent from both Russia 2018, which they failed to qualify for, and now the North American edition of 2026. The Super Eagles have appeared at six World Cups, reaching the round of sixteen on three occasions, and their absence from back-to-back tournaments represents a structural challenge that the current coaching staff under Eric Chelle and the NFF are attempting to address through a renewed development cycle.
If FIFA were to rule in Nigeria’s favour, the Super Eagles could theoretically be reinstated into the six-team intercontinental playoff in Mexico, where they would face the winner of the Jamaica versus New Caledonia tie for a final qualification slot.
The window for that process closes before the end of March. The Jordan tournament runs across the same window. Whether both could coexist logistically, should an unexpected ruling arrive, is a question neither the NFF nor FIFA has addressed publicly.
