To see female coaching Nigeria’s Super Eagles is my dream – Grace Towobola

By KEMI KASUMU

Grace Towobola is a CAF and UEFA licensed football coach who remains passionate about harnessing the power of sport for social change and development.  She is   thought leader in football matters, an advocate for gender equity in football, competent football coach, education instructor, and an astute sport manager. A Chevening Scholar with an MSc in Sport Coaching from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), Preston, United Kingdom. As a female coach, Towobola is already breaking those barriers and empowering women to become football coaches in Nigeria through a dedicated leadership programme. In this encounter with journalists, the Oyo State based coach raises public awareness about the challenges limiting girls’ and women football coaching roles, and how public/ private sector’s funding in terms of support can help women coaches achieve their potentials.

Grace Towobola has become a quintessential role model adored and courted by all and sundry because of her impact in the field of football where she is gradually breaking the glass ceilings and putting the gender bias against women coaches at bay. Her determination aside, Towobola’s top notch education received has further equipped her with the skills, knowledge, and technique to make a difference in a male dominated terrain therefore becoming independent and resilient.

Petite and soft spoken. Obviously, her appearance contradicts her intellectual prowess.  And it may not be wrong if she is simply addressed as a smallish one with a giant intellectual acumen. She is focused no doubt, but her consistency and unrelenting zeal to excel and conquer new heights is a proof that she is one of Nigeria’s shining lights to watch in the field of football.

Towobola is an Agric-Economics trained turned football coach, but how she is changing her career trajectory, is thrilling, an ambition nurtured at 12, which she  later re-awakened after her first degree.

Grace as she is fondly called is a CAF and UEFA licensed football coach. She serves as an Advisory Board Member for the Sustained Insight and Impact Initiative, a collaborative effort led by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the French Development Agency (AFD), and Paris 2024 through Sport Impact, where she contributes to identifying and funding groundbreaking sports initiatives.

As a 2022/2023 Chevening Scholar, Grace earned her MSc in Sport Coaching from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), Preston, United Kingdom.  She currently serves as the 2023–2026 IOC Young Leader for Nigeria, delivering the Women’s Football Development Initiative (WFDI) – an innovative programme designed to bridge the gender gap in coaching and leadership roles in football. Through WFDI, she provides free football coaching education for women aged 18–35 via the Coaches Leadership Training (CLT), while also empowering young girls in secondary schools to pursue professional football careers through the ASPIRE Project. The WFDI has already trained 85 coaches, engaged 2,000 girls across 20 schools, and established the WFDI Academy, which provides structured pathways for player and coach development. Currently, six CLT graduates are employed within WFDI, three as instructors in the 2025 CLT cohort and three as academy coaches, while 20 female players benefit from scholarship-backed training and free football gear.

Alongside leading the WFDI, Grace is committed to improving the standards of football coaching in Oyo State in her role as Training Officer (TO) of the Nigeria Football Coaches Association – Oyo State Chapter. As Training Officer (TO), she has launched the NFCA Oyo Education department, and she chairs a 7-man technical committee working on the NFCA Oyo DNA which is a 10 year development plan to elevate football coaching standards in Oyo state.

Grace began her coaching journey in 2017 as a volunteer at the University of Ilorin, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics. In 2019, she reached the semi-finals of the WorldRemit Arsenal Coaching Programme, a globally recognized competition for emerging coaches. During her National Youth Service (NYSC) in Abia State, she worked under Imama Amapakabo at Abia Warriors FC and served as an opposition analyst for Coach Fatai Osho at Enyimba FC, analyzing ES Sétif in the 2020/2021 CAF Confederation Cup. She thereafter pursued a masters’ degree in Sport Management at the University of Ibadan where she completed an internship at Remo Stars Football Club. Her stay at Remo Stars was remarkably remembered with her involvement as an assistant coach for the U15 team during the NPFL LaLiga U15 competition where Remo U15 team emerged winners of the competition.

Determined to pursue her goals, her Chevening Scholarship experience broadened her exposure to elite football structures, as she worked with Preston North End Women’s Football Team, served as a Foundation Coach at Manchester United Foundation, and managed UCLan Women’s Football Team B in the 2022/23 BUCS League while also representing international students at UCLan. She has participated in global sports leadership programs with the City Football Group, Manchester United, Women in Football (WIF), Downtown in Business, and UCLan, among others.

Grace’s exceptional contributions to women’s football development were recognized in 2023, when she received the Gold Award from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) through the Chevening Scholarship scheme for her outstanding voluntary efforts.

Grace has worked in several coaching capacities with male and female football teams in the Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL), British University and College Sports (BUCS) league, and with elite English clubs. Grace remains a passionate sport for development enthusiast.

She remains passionate about harnessing the power of sport for social change and development and is dedicated to transforming female football in Nigeria and beyond.

Grace has been doing this and that teaching aspiring   female coaches, but feels the time is ripe to raise public awareness and visibility of the challenges limiting girls’ participation in playing football and women representation in football coaching roles. Not only that, to bring attention to the WFDI, its projects (CLT, ASPIRE, Academy), and how the initiative is helping to solve these challenges highlighting the importance of WFDI to the football ecosystem/landscape.

“A lot is going on in that realm and we need both public and private sector’s support. The time is ripe to draw the attention of the Nigerian Football Federation, the Nigeria Olympic Committee, the Nigeria Women’s Football League to support the WFDI.

“We need funding and partnerships to position the WFDI and its projects as the ideal organisation for individuals, corporate organisations or institutions, and the government to partner with or sponsor.”

Delving into her life trajectory, Grace’s ambition to becoming a female coach began at age 12, a tall dream in the continent of Africa where fewer than one in 11 coaches are female, she faced an uphill battle. Now, with the support of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s Young Leaders Programme, she  is breaking those barriers and empowering women to become football coaches in Nigeria through a dedicated leadership programme.

“I took a lot of energy from my mum,” she said.  Speaking further, “My mum studied Pphysical Education (PE) and taught PE in schools. I remember walking the streets one day and finding a newspaper on the ground. I picked it up and I read about how Sir Alex Ferguson was very pivotal to helping Ronaldo win the Ballon d’Or.

“That instance, I knew I wanted to become a football coach. My IOC project is called the Women’s Football Development Initiative. WFDI, with three major objectives.”My number one objective is to encourage early career interest amongst girls and women to pursue professional careers in football. “The second is to use football to help girls return to and remain in education. The third is to harness the power of sports to foster active lifestyles amongst girls and women.

“What motivated me to launch this project in particular is that there are a lot of inequalities in the education sector. For instance, in the northeast of Nigeria, only about 41% of eligible women actually receive primary education. What’s the case in coaching education? You don’t find a lot of women in that space.

“I want to create an opportunity where young women receive the resources, they need to pursue professional careers in football. We are here at the stadium where I run the physical aspect of my project, the coaches’ leadership training.

“After the coaches’ leadership training in the classroom and on the field, female coaches are to go back to their teams and help develop female football clubs. That way, we help develop the female game. My role is to help female coaches build confidence to effectively deliver in their role as football coaches.

“Female participation in football is a big issue. We don’t see enough women doing it. In my state we have about 500 male coaches, but just seven female ones, and there are many issues around gender-based violence and abuse, so parents are reluctant to let their daughters play football. A programme like WFDI is addressing that problems.”

Towobola founded the WFDI in 2023 with the support of the IOC Young Leaders Programme, which provides funding and guidance in helping it achieve its three key objectives: promoting female participation in football and sport.

After a successful pilot phase, the WFDI is working towards these goals through a coach leadership training programme, a series of outreach visits to schools, and ongoing career support for female football coaches.

Throwing more light on WFDI activities, she said, “we encourage early football career interest among females through our ASPIRE project; we help girls return to and remain in education through our WFDI Academy; and we help develop more female football coaches in Nigeria through our Coaches Leadership Training (CLT).

“With ASPIRE, we visit secondary schools to create awareness of professional careers in the football industry and distribute our brochure, which details the various careers in football and how students can get into them. We train females between the ages of 18 and 35 to become football coaches through our free Coaches Leadership Training, with course contents delivered through a hybrid model over five months coupled with a three-month internship period.

Towobola’s efforts are already yielding results. According to one of WFDI volunteers, Oluwafunmilayo Abodunrin, ‘The programme has encouraged females from different areas of the world to come together to be able to participate in football and to be able to do sports in general. The positive impact of Grace’s project in my whole life as a volunteer is that it has helped me to meet a lot of people that I have never met before in my life.”

On how the project has helped him? Sodiq Nurudeen said it has been impactful while he is optimistic that those girls  being trained  would have the right skills set and the right education to become what they want to become in the realm of football.”

Grace might have graced the international stage hobnobbing with high and mighty. She admitted that the vision and mission is not lost. “I am ambitious. I look forward to a day when a female will coach the Super Eagles. And that is what I live for, to empower female coaches to get there. It’s going to take a while to get there, but I am willing to give it what it takes,” she stated.