By Barr. Adefila Kamal

Football in Nigeria has never been just a sport. It is emotion, argument, nationalism, and sometimes heartbreak wrapped into ninety minutes. That passion is a gift, but it often comes with a tendency to shout down progress before it has the chance to grow. In the middle of this noise sits the Nigeria Football Federation under the leadership of Ibrahim Musa Gusau, a man who has chosen steady hands over loud speeches, structure over drama, and long-term rebuilding over chasing instant applause.

When Gusau took office in 2022, he understood one thing clearly: the only way to fix Nigerian football is to repair its foundations. He said it openly during the 2025 NNL monthly awards ceremony — you cannot build an edifice from the rooftop. And true to that conviction, his tenure has taken shape quietly through structural investments that don’t trend on social media but matter where the future of the game is built. The construction of a players’ hostel and modern training pitches at the Moshood Abiola Stadium is one of the clearest signs of this shift. Nigeria has gone decades without basic infrastructure for its national teams, especially youth and age-grade squads. Gusau’s administration broke that pattern by delivering the first dedicated national-team hostel in our history, a project that signals an understanding that success is not luck — it is preparation.

The same thread runs through grassroots football. The maiden edition of the FCT FA Women’s Inter-Area Councils Football Tournament emerged under this administration, giving young female players a structured platform instead of the token attention they usually receive. These initiatives are not flashy. They do not dominate headlines. But they form the bedrock of any footballing nation that wants to be taken seriously.

Gusau’s leadership has also focused on lifting the domestic leagues out of years of decline. The NFF has revamped professional and semi-professional competitions, working to create consistent scheduling, fair officiating, and marketable competition structures. The growing number of global broadcasting partnerships — something unheard of in the old NPFL era — has brought more eyes, more credibility and more opportunities for clubs and players. Monthly awards for players, coaches and referees have introduced a culture of performance and merit, something our domestic game has needed for years. These are reforms that reshape the culture of football far beyond one season.

Internationally, Nigeria regained a powerful seat at the table when Gusau was elected President of the West African Football Union (WAFU B). This is not a ceremonial achievement. In football politics, influence determines opportunities, hosting rights, development grants, international appointments and the respect with which nations are treated. For too long, Nigeria’s voice in the region was inconsistent. Gusau’s emergence changes that, and it places Nigeria in a position where its administrative competence cannot be dismissed.

His administration has also made it clear that women’s football, youth development and academy systems are no longer side projects. There is a renewed intention to repair the broken pathways that once produced global stars with almost predictable frequency. If Nigeria is going to remain a powerhouse, development must become a machine, not an afterthought.

Still, for many observers, none of this seems to matter because the yardstick is always a single match, a single tournament or a single disappointing moment. Public criticism often grows louder than the facts. Fans want instant results, and when they don’t come, the instinct is to blame whoever is in office at the moment. But this approach has repeatedly sabotaged Nigerian football. Constant leadership changes wipe out institutional memory and scatter reform efforts before they mature. No nation becomes great by resetting its football house every time tempers flare.

Gusau’s leadership is unfolding at a time when FIFA and CAF are tightening their expectations for professionalism, financial transparency and infrastructure. Nigeria cannot afford scandals, disarray or combative politics. We need the kind of administrative consistency that global football bodies can trust — and this is exactly the lane Gusau has chosen. He has not been perfect; no administrator is. But he has been consistent, measured and focused. In an ecosystem that often rewards noise, this is rare.

For progress to hold, Nigeria must shift from the culture of outrage to a culture of constructive contribution. The media, civil society, ex-players, club owners, fan groups — everyone has a role. The truth is that Nigerian football’s biggest enemy has never been the NFF president, whoever he might be at the time. The real enemies are impatience, instability and emotional decision-making. They derail strategy. They kill reforms. They weaken institutions. And they turn football — our greatest cultural asset — into a battlefield of blame.

Gusau’s effort to reposition the NFF is a reminder that real development is rarely glamorous. It is slow, disciplined and often misunderstood. But it is the only route that leads to the future we claim to want: a football system built on structure, modern governance, infrastructure, youth development and global influence. Nigeria will flourish when we start protecting our institutions instead of tearing them down after every misstep.

If we truly want Nigerian football to rise, we must recognise genuine work when we see it. We must support continuity when it is clearly producing a roadmap. And we must resist the temptation to substitute outrage for analysis. Ibrahim Musa Gusau’s tenure is not defined by noise. It is defined by groundwork — the kind that elevates nations long after the shouting stops.

Barr. Adefila Kamal is a legal practitioner and development specialist. He serves as the National President of the Civil Society Network for Good Governance (CSNGG), with a long-standing commitment to transparency, institutional reform and sports governance in Nigeria

By Taiwo Olatunji, CFA

Nigeria’s infrastructure ambition is not constrained by vision, but by the financing architecture. The public sector balance sheet, which has been the primary source of financing, has become very tight, while financing from the private sector is available and increasing, with a focus on long-term, naira-denominated assets. Hence, the challenge lies in effectively connecting this capital to bankable projects at scale and with discipline. Project bonds, created, structured and distributed by investment banks, are the instruments required to bridge the country’s infrastructure needs.

The scale of the need is clear. Nigeria’s Revised NIIMP (2020–2043) estimates ~US$2.3 trillion, about US$100bn, a year is required annually for the next 30 years to lift infrastructure to 70% of GDP. Africa’s pensions, insurers and sovereign funds already hold over US$1.1 trillion that can be mobilised for this purpose, but they require new and innovative approaches to enhance their participation in addressing this challenge.

What is broken with the status quo?

Nigeria continues to finance inherently long-dated assets through the issuance of local currency public bonds, Sukuk and Eurobonds. This approach creates a heavy burden on the government’s balance sheet while sometimes causing refinancing risk and FX exposures, where naira cash flows service dollar liabilities. It has also led to the slow conversion of the pipeline of identified projects because many infrastructure projects have not been prepared, appraised and structured to attract the private sector.

Why project bonds and where they sit in the stack

Project bonds are debt securities issued by project SPVs and serviced from project cash flows, typically secured by concessions, offtake agreements, or availability payments. Unlike typical bonds (corporate or government), which are backed by the sponsor’s balance sheets, project bonds are backed by the cash flow generated by the financed project. They often have longer duration, are tradeable, aligned with the long operating life of infrastructure projects and best suited for pension and insurance investors.

Globally, this type of instrument has been used to finance major projects such as toll roads, power plants, and social infrastructure. For example, in Latin America, transportation and energy projects have been financed through project bonds from local and international investors, through the 144A market, a U.S. framework that allows companies to access large institutional investors without going through a full public offering. Similarly, in India, rupee-denominated project bonds have benefited from partial credit guarantees provided by institutions like Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, which help lower investment risk and attract more investors.

In practice, project bonds can be structured in two ways: (i) as a take-out instrument, refinancing bank or DFI construction loans once an asset has reached operational stability; or (ii) as a bond issued from day one for brownfield or late-stage greenfield projects where revenue visibility is high, often supported by credit enhancements such as guarantees.

In both cases, the instrument achieves the same outcome: aligning long-term, project cash flows with the long-term liabilities of domestic institutional investors.

The enabling ecosystem is already emerging

1. Nigeria is not starting from zero. Regulatory infrastructure is already in place. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued detailed rules governing Project Bonds and Infrastructure Funds, creating standardized issuance structures aligned with global best practice and familiar to institutional investors. The SEC is also mulling the inclusion of the proposed rules on Credit Enhancement Service Providers in the existing rules of the Commission.

2. Market benchmarks are already available. The sovereign yield curve, published by the Debt Management Office (DMO) through its regular monthly auctions, provides a transparent reference point for pricing. This curve serves as the base risk-free rate, against which project bond spreads can be calibrated to reflect construction, operating, and sector-specific risks.

3. The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has revised its Regulation on the investment of Pension Fund Assets, increasing the amount of the country’s N25.9 trillion pension assets to be allocated to infrastructure.

4. InfraCredit has established a robust local-currency guarantee framework, supporting an aggregate guaranteed portfolio of approximately ₦270 billion. The portfolio carries a weighted average tenor of ~8 years, with demonstrated capacity to extend maturities up to 20 years. (InfraCredit 2025)

Why merchant banks should lead

Merchant banks sit at the nexus of origination, structuring, underwriting, and distribution, and they need to work with projects sponsors, financiers and government to develop a pipeline of bankable infrastructure projects. A pipeline of bankable infrastructure projects is important to attract investors as they prefer to invest in an economy with a recognizable pipeline. A pipeline also suggests that a structured and well-thought-out approach was adopted, and the projects would have identified all the major risks and the proposed mitigants to address the identified risks.

This “banks-as-catalysts” model, an economic framework that states banks can play an active and creative role in promoting industrialization and economic development, particularly in emerging markets, can be adopted to structure and mobilise domestic private finance into Infrastructure projects.

Coronation Merchant Bank’s role and vision

At Coronation, we believe the identification, structuring and testing of bankable infrastructure projects are the constraints to mobilization of private capital into the infrastructure space. We bring an integrated platform across Financial Advisory, Capital Mobilization, Commercial Debt, Private Debt and Alternative Financing to identify, structure, underwrite and distribute infrastructure debt into domestic institutions. The Bank works with DFIs, guarantee providers and other banks to scale issuance. Our franchise has supported infrastructure debt issuances via the capital markets, likewise Nigerian corporates and the Government.

From Insight to Execution

If you are considering the issuance of a project bond or you want to discuss pipeline readiness, kindly contact [email protected] or call 020-01279760.

Taiwo Olatunji, CFA is the Group Head of  Investment Banking at Coronation Merchant Bank

By Kayode Aladesuyi

Globally, a 30-second clip of a CEO’s video or voice note, captured casually from a public interview or a private voicemail, can cost a company millions. Across Africa, our digital identities (the very sound of our voice, the look of our face) are now easier to steal and manipulate.

We are living through a profound, disorienting moment where the very foundation of commerce and community: trust, has quietly turned into our biggest liability.

I remember a conversation that crystallised this problem for me. An acquaintance called me one frantic evening, her voice shaking. She’d received a series of frantic voice notes on her WhatsApp, supposedly from her nephew, who she’s funding through university, claiming he’d been arrested and needed a quick N1.5 million sent to a new account to avoid jail.

The urgency was extreme, the story was believable, and critically, the voice was identical to her nephew’s. The intonation, the slight stammer when he’s stressed, the very pitch; it was all there. She was minutes from transferring the funds when her daughter, who happened to be present, suggested a quick video call to verify the location. The scammer declined, and the line went dead.

What had started as simple, clumsy text message 419 scams years ago has now evolved into highly sophisticated voice and video phishing. We used to worry about misspelled emails; now we must worry about perfect, AI-generated replicas of the people we love and trust the most.

It’s the same global epidemic that saw a finance worker in Hong Kong tricked into authorising a $35 million transfer after a seamless deepfake video call with ‘his UK-based CFO.’ The stakes, for us, are just as high.

This problem hits Africa differently.

We are a continent that has leapt ahead in digital adoption, often skipping fixed infrastructure entirely. We have embraced mobile money, fintech, and instant messaging (WhatsApp and Telegram) as the primary channels for both business and family communication.

This rapid adoption, paired with often lower levels of digital literacy, creates the perfect deepfake incubator.

Consider the tension

• The Cost to Create: The technology to create a convincing deepfake of your CEO, your politician, or your relative is now near zero. An average phone, laptop and open-source AI tools are all that is needed.
• The Cost to Repair: The cost of repairing the damage, the shattered reputation, the stolen millions, the loss of faith in public institutions, is practically infinite.

Data shows this vulnerability is being ruthlessly exploited. According to SABRIC (2024), deepfake-related scams targeting the South African banking and fintech sectors have surged by an alarming 1,200% in the last year. Globally, financial losses linked to deepfake fraud hit $1.56 billion in one year (Surfshark, 2025). We are not immune; we are ground zero for this new frontier of digital warfare.

 Building Our Own Shield

As a founder, I had to ask: Why is the solution always built elsewhere and then retrofitted to our reality?

My vision was not to build another piece of software; it was to forge a trust-verification layer built specifically for the speed, intimacy and complexity of African digital life. We understand that here, authentication is not a luxury; it is survival. Thankfully, there are essential digital safeguards Curation AI and others. Built on the deep conviction that Africa must build for Africa, these technologies work by authenticating digital content at its source, providing an instant verification layer that confirms its provenance. They answer the one question that has become impossible to answer manually: Is this real?

The Currency of Trust

Trust is the ultimate currency of any society; it fuels commerce, holds communities together and enables governance. When that currency is devalued by technology, everything collapses.

The deepfake era is here. We cannot wish it away with higher firewall spending or more complex passwords. We must fight AI with better AI.

Africa is leading the world in mobile adoption and financial innovation. We must now lead in protective security. The time to adopt protective tools, to enforce a zero-trust model where every piece of high-value digital communication must be authenticated, is now before deepfakes become the continent’s next, and most insidious, economic crisis.

Deepfake authenticators like Curation AI are not a convenience; they are shields, and it’s time we put them on.

Kayode Aladesuyi is the founder and CEO of MYai Robotics (holding company for Curation AI and MYai Sells). He writes from Atlanta, Georgia, USA.