NFF President Campaigns For CAF President Patrice Motsepe

The Nigeria Football Federation president, Ibrahim Gusau has reeled out reasons why the current president of the Confederation of Africa Football (CAF), Patrice Motsepe, should contest for a second term in office.

Patrice Motsepe has been the CAF president for three years and the tenure of the South African football administrator will expire in 2025.

During the 2023 AFCON in Ivory Coast which was said to be the best edition of the competition, reporters asked Motsepe if he would stand for re-election. But the 62-year-old Tshwane native didn’t give a definite response.

In an interview with Soccer Africa, Ibrahim Gusau took his time to highlight why Patrice Motsepe should be pushed to contest for a second term in office. He credited the football administrator for the success of the 2023 AFCON, and the influx of corporate organisations into African football.

“I just want to make it clear, if I had the opportunity, I would force Motsepe to come back as CAF president because he has brought a lot of things that we were lacking in CAF, most importantly in the area of trust. Now we are talking about how the corporate world can bring their money into football in Africa, and we know that nobody would like to bring their money where they don’t have much trust and confidence that the money they are bringing into that organisation will be fully utilised,” Gusau said.

“If you look at the record from the last three years, you can see what is going on in CAF. Just last AFCON, you see we had about two billion viewers. The last AFCON in 2021, which happened only a year after he came in, CAF was only able to realise a profit of $4m. Now, after the last AFCON, CAF was able to generate a profit of $80m. That is to tell you that there is a leadership that is working.

“We need to give him another opportunity and by the grace of God, we are going to come out to campaign for him and we’re going to tell him that he must do it.”