Every member of the Super Falcons squad that won the 2025 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations has now been paid the naira equivalent of $100,000, according to the National Sports Commission. Pulse puts it at about ₦134m a player. Coaches and officials got the equivalent of $50,000 each. The commission announced it on Monday, more than a year after Nigeria came from two goals down to beat hosts Morocco 3-2 in Rabat and take a 10th title.
The cash was the last piece of a package President Bola Tinubu announced at a reception in Abuja on 28 July 2025, which also covered three-bedroom apartments for the team and the Officer of the Order of the Niger honour. The apartments and honours were handed over earlier. By ICIR’s count at the time, the honour went to all 24 players and 11 members of the technical crew, which would put the full cash bill at close to $3m, though the exact headcount for the cash isn’t in the commission’s statement.
It was never an uncontroversial gift. Within a day of the reception, presidential spokesman Bayo Onanuga defended it on X by pointing out that the Big Brother Naija winner takes home ₦150m, and Omoyele Sowore compared it with how retired police officers are treated. Some X users called it too much for a country dealing with poverty and insecurity. Others welcomed it.
NSC chairman Shehu Dikko is now using the payment to make a different point. He says it breaks from the old pattern in which Nigerian athletes wait years for promised rewards, and credits the Ministries of Finance, Special Duties and Inter-Governmental Affairs, and Housing and Urban Development for working with the commission to deliver. The same government paid D’Tigress in September, giving each player the naira equivalent of $100,000 for their fifth straight AfroBasket title. The basketball team got its apartment papers and OON certificates in February.
