Former Super Eagles player Abiodun Obafemi has questioned the usefulness of the Nigeria Football Federation’s newly constituted fact-finding committee, warning that another investigation may do little to solve problems he believes have been obvious for years.

The former international is sceptical that the latest initiative will bring about the fundamental changes Nigerian football needs, arguing that the major challenges confronting the game are already well known to those responsible for its administration.

Obafemi believes the NFF should be focusing less on identifying problems and more on accepting responsibility and taking action to correct them.

According to the former Super Eagles player, “the problems in the country’s football are known to everyone.”

He questioned why another committee was necessary when, in his view, the federation is already aware of the weaknesses affecting the administration and development of football in the country.

“The NFF does not need a committee to remind it of its responsibilities and failures in running the affairs of football in the country,” Obafemi said.

His criticism comes after the NFF established a six-member fact-finding committee to investigate the recent poor performances of Nigeria’s national teams.

The move has generated mixed reactions, with some stakeholders welcoming the attempt to examine the situation while others remain doubtful about whether the exercise will produce meaningful change.

For Obafemi, the concern is not simply about the latest committee, but about the history of similar exercises that have failed to produce the transformation expected by Nigerian football stakeholders.

He described the latest initiative as “another jamboree,” arguing that this is not the first time a committee has been established to examine problems within Nigerian football.

The former international believes previous experiences should make the football authorities cautious about repeating a process that ends with a report but produces little tangible change.

His position puts him firmly among those demanding more than investigations and recommendations from the NFF.

The debate also comes as Nigerian football faces broader questions over national-team performance, administration, grassroots development, the domestic game and the long-term direction of the sport.

While the committee has now been given the responsibility of examining the circumstances behind the national teams’ struggles, its eventual report will face a crucial test: whether its recommendations can translate into concrete reforms.

For Obafemi, however, Nigerians have heard enough explanations.

The former Super Eagles player wants the football authorities to move beyond committees and reports and confront the problems that have continued to hold the country’s football back.

The question now is whether the latest fact-finding exercise will finally lead to action—or become another report that gathers dust.

Dangote Group, the empire of Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote, has offered a 30 per cent holding in its proposed 700,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery to nations in East Africa, the region where the mega crude-processing plant is to be located, Bloomberg reported Friday.

Kenya, where the new refinery will be sited at the southeastern coastal town of Lamu, will take a 10 per cent stake estimated at around half a trillion dollars, David Ndii, a top economic adviser of President Ruto, told Bloomberg.

“The total for the region is about $1.5 billion. I don’t actually see a challenge in doing that, and if some of them are not off-taking we will backstop,” Mr Ndii was quoted as saying at a capital market conference in Nairobi on Thursday.

Ethiopia and Rwanda are said to have indicated willingness to participate.

Mr Dangote is turning to business-friendly Kenya and other promising markets in East Africa to expand his multi-billion dollar empire after facing an avalanche of resistance from his home country Nigeria in bringing a refinery of similar capacity to completion.

The Nigerian refinery, situated in the outskirts of Lagos and initially projected to be completed in 2016, did not see the light of the day until eight years after, held back by logistic delay, infrastructure constraints and COVID-19 lockdowns.

The magnate, who has built his fortune around cement, sugar and a couple of fast-moving consumer products, accused international oil companies of sabotaging efforts at getting the refinery running seamlessly in its early days.

He claimed that the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, which serves as the top watchdog for the midstream and downstream segments of the oil industry, issued new licences to some players to import “dirty fuel” as part of a broader conspiracy to frustrate his push to wean Nigeria off its longstanding dependency on fuel imports.

In the heat of the crisis, Farouk Ahmed, the CEO of the regulator at the time, resigned his appointment, while Mele Kyari, the immediate past managing director of state oil company NNPC Limited, whom Mr Dangote accused of surreptitiously running a fuel blending plant off the coast of Malta, was shown the exit door.

“I knew there would be a fight. But I didn’t know that the mafia in oil, they are stronger than the mafia in drugs,” he told an investment conference in June 2024.

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A private placement, which raised $2.5 billion ahead of the Nigerian refinery’s planned $5 billion initial public offer scheduled for October, valued the refinery at $40 billion.

The private equity capital raise was 3.7 times, drawing interest from African institutional investors and institutional investors from outside the continent.
The groundbreaking of the Kenyan refinery is expected to kick off next month.

That puts the company on course to achieve the ambition of doubling its refining capacity to 1.4 million bpd in the next three years, with processing capacity at the refinery in Lagos already upped to 700,000 bpd from its original 650,000 bpd.

The planned refinery in Kenya is expected to cost $15 billion to $17 billion.