2026 WCQ: Oliseh posits home-based players would have done better against Lesotho as Dosu says the draw is like defeat.

Former Super Eagles manager Sunday Oliseh, former has described the team’s performance against Lesotho as a “national embarrassment”.

The 49-year-old spoke in a tweet on his official X account on Friday.

Nigeria had to crawl from a goal down to secure a 1-1 draw against Lesotho at the Godswill Akpabio stadium in Uyo on Thursday.

The Eagles were spared a disastrous home loss by a header from Oluwasemilogo Ajayi in the 67th minute in Nigeria’s opening game of their 2026 World Cup qualification campaign.

The result earned Lesotho its first-ever point against the Eagles.

Speaking on the match, Oliseh described the result as a “shocker” and claimed Nigeria’s home-based players would beat the Lesotho side.

He added that there should be consequences for such performance.

 “This nightmare go ever end? Woke up to this shocker this morning,” the tweet reads.

“Our homebased suppose dey beat Lesotho na! Dem even first us score!!!! The painful part be say, no consequences for these national embarrassments, sef!”

Oliseh was the coach of the Eagles for eight months between 2015 and 2016 before he resigned due to contract violations, lack of support, unpaid wages and benefits to his players and assistant coaches.

Former Super Eagles goalkeeper, Joseph Dosu, agreed with Oliseh.

In an interview after the game, a disappointed Dosu said it was very difficult to process the result.

The Atlanta 1996 Olympic gold medalist in football said nothing should have stopped Nigeria from beating Lesotho.“We should never have played a draw against Lesotho. It is like a defeat for us and for Lesotho, it is like a win,” Dosu said.

“They will go back to their country with the 1-1 draw. It is a slap on us that Lesotho came to Nigeria and played a draw, we should be beating Lesotho in and out.

“Football is not mathematics they say but we should have beaten Lesotho, this is not the time to rejoice, it is time for Nigerian football to rise.”

Speaking on the performance of Taiwo Awoniyi and Victor Boniface, both of whom started the game in the absence of Osimhen, Dosu said he was disappointed.

The retired goalkeeper stated that the players failed to seize the chance to impress in the Napoli attacker’s absence and also failed to take their chances in the game.

“When you have an opportunity, you grab it. They already had it when Osimhen was not there, they failed to grab it. They had their chances but they did not take it,” he said.

“But we should be happy it is a draw. If it were a defeat, it would have been a disaster. You see them in their clubs week-in, week-out and they score goals and this time around, they could not score for Nigeria.”

Nigeria will travel to Rwanda to face Zimbabwe in the next game of the qualifiers on Sunday.