Nigeria have not lifted the Afcon trophy since 2013 and, after finishing runners-up at the last edition in Ivory Coast, the country’s football federation launched a campaign dubbed “Naija 4 the Win”.<\/p>\n
Yet this year’s finals in Morocco come quickly off the back of the disappointment of failing to qualify for the 2026 World Cup.<\/p>\n
The Super Eagles dominated possession from the outset and Akor Adams could have given them a commanding early advantage, but Foba produced two fine saves within the opening 12 minutes to deny the Sevilla forward.<\/p>\n
West Brom’s Ajayi finally eased the frustration of Nigerian supporters after a tense opening half-hour with his second international goal. Soon after, Tanzania had Bakari Mwamnyeto to thank for clearing a Victor Osimhen effort off the line.<\/p>\n
Tanzania emerged with renewed belief after the break, although Osimhen thought he had extended Nigeria’s lead soon after the restart only to have his effort ruled out for offside.<\/p>\n
Yet, after the East Africans drew level, former England youth international Lookman struck to make it 2-1.<\/p>\n
His moment of quality proved enough to seal victory, much to the delight of the majority of the 11,444 fans in attendance.<\/p>\n
The Super Eagles will now hope history repeats itself, having beaten Tanzania in their opening match on home soil in 1980 before going on to lift their first-ever continental title – while the East Africans are still awaiting their first victory at the Afcon finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nigeria have not lifted the Afcon trophy since 2013 and, after finishing runners-up at the last edition in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-366286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}