Nine players were in camp at Ikenne-Remo by Monday morning. Farida AbdulWahab, Joy Igbokwe, Christiana Uzoma and six others had reported early, Premium Times reported. The foreign-based stars were due later. Augustine Eguavoen had his first group to work with.
Friday brings Comoros. It is the first leg of a Los Angeles 2028 Olympic qualifier at the Remo Stars Stadium, with the return on 13 October. It is also the first time Eguavoen, 61, has managed a women's team. TheCable was blunt about that when the NFF named him interim head coach on 8 September.
So the honest answer to the question many fans are typing into search bars is this: the Super Falcons coach in October 2026 is not Justine Madugu. It is a man from the 1994 generation of the Super Eagles, borrowed from his day job as NFF technical director.
Fourteen months from Rabat to the exit door
The story of the current bench starts with the last one. Rabat, July 2025. The Falcons trailed Morocco 2-0 at half time in the delayed final of WAFCON 2024. They won 3-2 and took a tenth continental crown, according to CAF.
Madugu had been an assistant at four previous WAFCONs before taking the top job. The Adamawa-born coach described the turnaround simply: “Going 2-0 down in the first half? That was the biggest test. We believed in ourselves.”
The NFF rewarded him. Madugu himself confirmed to AfricaSoccer that he had been offered a two-year deal running from 1 October 2025 to October 2027.
It did not last. At WAFCON 2026 in Morocco the Falcons lost their opening game to debutants Malawi. Cameroon then beat them 1-0 in the quarter-finals, and South Africa won the World Cup play-off 2-1, P.M. News reported. Nigeria, ever-present at the Women's World Cup since 1991, will not be in Brazil in 2027.
The end came on 17 August. The NFF Executive Committee posted a short message on X asking “members of the technical crew of the @NGSuper_Falcons to step down with immediate effect”, as Pulse Sports quoted it. Madugu and his assistant Ann Chiejine were gone.
From Sapele to Gent and the 1994 squad
Eguavoen was born in Sapele on 19 August 1965 and played as a right wing back, his career record shows.
He left ACB Lagos for Belgium in 1986 and spent four seasons at Gent, then moved on to Kortrijk, with later stops at CD Ourense in Spain, Sacramento Scorpions in the United States, Torpedo Moscow and finally Sliema Wanderers in Malta before he retired in 2001. For Nigeria he won 49 caps between 1987 and 1998 and scored once. The career peak came in 1994, when he was part of the squad that won the Nations Cup and then reached the round of 16 at the World Cup in the United States, alongside the likes of Jay Jay Okocha and Sunday Oliseh, as Africanews recalled.
That generation still shapes how Nigerian fans see him. Respect, mostly.
The NFF's favourite stand-in
If there is a single thread running through Eguavoen's coaching life, it is the word interim. Vanguard built a whole column around it last month, headlined “When Interim Becomes an Identity”.
| Period | Role | Notable result |
|---|---|---|
| 2003 | Golden Eaglets | Bronze at the African U-17 Championship |
| 2005 to 2007 | Super Eagles | Bronze at AFCON 2006 in Egypt |
| 2008 to 2009 | Enyimba | Federation Cup winner |
| 2010 to 2011 | Nigeria U-23 | Missed London 2012 qualification |
| 2020 onwards | NFF technical director | Long-term federation post |
| 2021 to 2022 | Super Eagles (interim) | AFCON round of 16 exit to Tunisia; World Cup play-off loss to Ghana |
| 2024 | Super Eagles (interim) | Took over after Bruno Labbadia's withdrawal |
| 2026 | Super Falcons (interim) | Olympic qualifiers v Comoros |
The 2024 spell was the most turbulent. Labbadia had agreed to take the Eagles before backing out over a tax dispute, Soccerway reported. Eguavoen was handed AFCON qualifiers against Benin and Rwanda at a few days' notice. After a goalless draw in Kigali he had to deny reports that he had resigned. “I am still very much in charge,” he told reporters, via allAfrica. Eric Chelle was appointed in January 2025, and when rumours resurfaced months later that Eguavoen wanted the Eagles job back, he dismissed them in public: “I have a very good working relationship with Coach Eric Chelle, and I have absolutely no interest in taking over the squad,” he told Soccernet.
For the Falcons, he has company. Christopher Danjuma of Nasarawa Amazons, who took the Falconets to the 2024 U-20 Women's World Cup, is one assistant; Ayisat Yusuf, a former Falcons defender with 68 caps and a Beijing 2008 Olympian, is another; Olatunji Baruwa trains the goalkeepers (Vanguard, Soccernet).
The 28-man list, led by captain Rasheedat Ajibade and including Chiamaka Nnadozie, Asisat Oshoala and Michelle Alozie, also handed chances to several youngsters, Complete Sports noted. Fans who want the historical yardstick can measure the current group against the Super Falcons' greatest players and the all-time top scorers list.
What is the Super Falcons coach salary?
No figure has been published. The NFF has not released the terms of Eguavoen's interim arrangement. As technical director he is already on the federation's payroll, at a rate never made public. Madugu's two-year deal was announced without any salary figure either, AfricaSoccer noted. Nothing has been said about the year left on it.
The men's side is a different matter. In June 2026 Sports Commission chairman Shehu Dikko confirmed new terms for Eric Chelle: \”we are going to increase his money\”. Pulse Sports reported the monthly salary rising from $50,000 to $100,000. At the official NFEM rate of about ₦1,328 to the dollar on 2 October 2026 (Vanguard), that is roughly ₦66.4 million before and ₦132.8 million a month now.
| Coach | Team | Published monthly pay |
|---|---|---|
| Eric Chelle | Super Eagles | $100,000 (about ₦132.8m) |
| Justine Madugu (until Aug 2026) | Super Falcons | Not published |
| Augustine Eguavoen (interim) | Super Falcons | Not published |
For the full breakdown on the men's side, see our page on the Super Eagles coach salary.
Our view
“He is only for the Comoros match and hopefully by then we would have decided on a new head coach for the Falcons.\” So said an unnamed senior NFF official to Score Nigeria.
That sentence says more about the federation than about the coach. Comoros, ranked 187th in the world, beat Sudan 30-0 on aggregate to get here and should not trouble a Nigeria side ranked 36th (allAfrica), but the Olympic road runs through several more two-legged rounds, and nobody yet knows who will lead the Falcons beyond next Tuesday. A grassroots coach, Oluwatobi Omotoso, argued in the Peoples Gazette that “Football is general, be it male or female.” Maybe so. What the women's game here has lacked since August is a plan with a name and a contract attached. Africa's champions of fourteen months ago deserve one. Soon.
Sources: pmnewsnigeria.com, www.pulsesports.ng, www.thecable.ng, www.vanguardngr.com, www.vanguardngr.com, premiumtimesng.com, allafrica.com, www.completesports.com, scorenigeria.com.ng, www.cafonline.com, africasoccer.com, en.wikipedia.org, www.africanews.com, allafrica.com, www.soccerway.com, soccernet.ng, soccernet.ng, www.pulsesports.ng, www.vanguardngr.com, gazettengr.com
This article was most recently revised and updated 14 seconds ago ago
