NPFL: Shorunmu reveals why Abia Warriors failed to finish among the top three

Abia Warriors spent months threatening a continental qualification spot only to crumble in the final stretch, and the man who stepped in as interim coach has now delivered a frank post-mortem on exactly what went wrong.

Abia Warriors entered the 2025/26 NPFL season with little noise and plenty of intent. For long stretches of the campaign, the Umuahia club occupied third and fourth positions on the table, keeping a CAF Confederation Cup ticket within touching distance. They finished seventh with 55 points instead. The collapse that buried those hopes was swift, ugly, and, according to goalkeepers’ coach Ike Shorunmu, entirely avoidable.

Shorunmu, the former Super Eagles goalkeeper who played at the 2002 FIFA World Cup and later helped Nigeria win the 2013 AFCON as a coaching staff member, stepped into interim charge of Abia Warriors for their final league game after head coach Imama Amapakabo and his assistant Bethel Orji were handed indefinite suspensions. Speaking after the season ended, Shorunmu did not mince his words about why his club fell apart when they needed to hold firm.

The former Besiktas and Shooting Stars shot-stopper was blunt in his assessment, pointing to a belief within the squad that the continental place was already secured long before it actually was. That complacency, he said, proved fatal.

 “The team became overconfident, hence the collapse. The team felt that the ticket had already been achieved. Now, see where we are.”

It is a familiar story in Nigerian club football, but that does not make it any less painful to live through. Abia Warriors had worked hard through the bulk of the season to put themselves in a position where CAF football felt genuinely achievable for the first time in a while. Three results undid all of it: a 2-0 home defeat to Kun Khalifat, a 4-0 hammering away at Warri Wolves, and a further loss on the road to Remo Stars. The Kun Khalifat defeat at home was the result that triggered the decision to suspend Amapakabo and Orji, with Shorunmu then taking the reins for the Warri Wolves fixture to close out the season.