Off target: Sunday Oliseh is wrong to blame Osimhen for Nigeria’s Super Eagles AFCON 2025 failure

In the wake of​ Nigeria’s failure to win AFCON 2025, former captain Sunday Oliseh has dominated headlines by pointing the finger at Victor Osimhen. 

His narrative, that a Round of 16 spat between Osimhen and Ademola Lookman "destroyed team chemistry", is high on drama but, frankly, low on facts.

While Oliseh is within his rights to demand discipline, his attempt to link a mid-tournament altercation to Nigeria's semifinal exit ignores the reality of what actually happened on the pitch in Morocco.

Oliseh claims that after the Mozambique incident, the team lost its ‘bite’ and Lookman became a ‘shadow of himself.’ The statistics and the eye test suggest otherwise.

In the very next game, a high-stakes quarterfinal against Algeria, the Super Eagles produced their most dominant display of the entire tournament. 

It wasn't a team in collapse; it was a team in top gear. At the heart of that 2–0 masterclass was Osimhen, who silenced critics with a Man of the Match performance, scoring the opener and unselfishly assisting the second.

Far from being ‘demoralised,’ Lookman and Osimhen combined brilliantly, with the Atalanta man creating two chances, two key passes and two big chances in the game, proving that professional athletes can have heated moments and still deliver at the highest level. 

If toxicity was the problem, Nigeria wouldn’t have outclassed the Desert Foxes so convincingly, with both players seen celebrating together with warm hugs.

To suggest Nigeria lost the semifinal because of a ‘broken spirit’ is to ignore the elephant in the room: the officiating of Ghanaian referee Daniel Laryea. I can understand Oliseh avoiding this issue given his role in the tournament and relationship with CAF.

The semifinal against hosts Morocco wasn't lost in the dressing room; it was marred by a series of inexplicable decisions that tilted the scales. 

From the questionable yellow card that ruled out Calvin Bassey for the subsequent match to the inconsistent foul calls that heavily favoured the home side beyond measure, Laryea’s performance was, in the words of many fans and pundits, an "officiating disaster class."

When a match of that magnitude is decided by the thinnest of margins, a referee's inability to remain objective has a far greater impact than a disagreement from two rounds prior. 

Nigeria fought for 120 minutes in a hostile atmosphere, only to fall in the lottery of a penalty shootout. That isn't a lack of mental edge, that’s football.

Oliseh also slammed the team for celebrating a bronze medal, calling it a "culture of mediocrity." While we all strive for gold, there is a fine line between demanding excellence and refusing to acknowledge progress. 

In a tournament where heavyweights like Algeria, Tunisia, and Cote d’Iovire, the defending champions, fell early, finishing on the podium while navigating hostile officiating and setbacks is an achievement worth acknowledging, not as the ceiling, but as a foundation.

Sunday Oliseh’s ‘Jagun Jagun’ era was legendary for its grit, but his current critique feels like a reach. Blaming the team's best player for a failure that was clearly manufactured by external factors on the pitch is not just unfair, it’s a distraction from the real issues facing African officiating.

I write in peace.