Egypt are pulling all the strings to ensure they overtake the Super Eagles and claim one of the five top seeds for the 2022 World Cup playoffs in March.
Top seeding guarantees a team to avoid top guns like African champions Algeria, Senegal and Morocco.
A top seeded team will also play the first leg of the playoffs at away before hosting the return leg.
The playoffs will be played between March 21 and 29, 2022.
SCORENigeria checks showed that the Egyptian-dominated CAF secretariat may well have been instrumental in shifting the draw date of December 18, 2021 to January 22 or 26, 2022.
The November FIFA Rankings placed Nigeria among the top five seeds in Africa and 29 points ahead of Egypt and had the draw been staged in December, the Super Eagles would have been one of the five teams seeded for the playoffs.
However, the change in draw dates to January means the January 2022 FIFA Rankings would now be employed to seed the top five teams for the playoffs that will decide the five teams to represent after at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Matches at the delayed 2021 AFCON in Cameroon could therefore be crucial in the January FIFA Rankings and incidentally, the Super Eagles battle Egypt on January 11 in an opening group game.
Besides that, Egypt are expected to gain some points on the FIFA Rankings courtesy of their participation in the 2021 FIFA Arab Cup, which begins in Qatar tomorrow.
Egypt are drawn in Group alongside African champions Algeria, Sudan and Lebanon.
Nigeria will not win points on the FIFA Rankings around this time as they do not have any international engagements.
So what’s is the NFF people doing about this?