Joe Aribo is one of the Nigeria players leaving with his reputation intact despite the Super Eagles' shock elimination from the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations following a 1-0 loss to Tunisia on Sunday night.

The Super Eagles number 10 bagged his first assist for the national team in the win against Egypt and set the tournament alight in the group stage, causing problems with his runs from midfield to join the attack.

Aribo had chances of his own and was unfortunate not to score his first competitive goal for the national team in the three matches he featured.

Interviewed in the mixed zone shortly after the loss to Tunisia, the versatile Glasgow Rangers midfielder still carried himself graciously despite the defeat and spoke honestly about the game, what went wrong, Iwobi's red card and what the Super Eagles could have done differently.

Here's what Aribo had to say :

What do you think went wrong?

I think we started really slow, we allowed them to get a foothold in the game .

You can' take anything away from them but we should have been better in the ninety minutes and it just took too long to respond until the first goal the only time we started playing and of course we had the red card incident which was a bit disappointing also.

You think maybe you underestimated Tunisia?

I wouldn't say that because we go into every game with respect for our opponents so it has nothing to do with underestimating them.

Like I said they had a good game plan, they did what they had to do but we just weren't good enough on the day.

What exactly do you think you would have done differently in the game?

You can say anything you can say, we could have done this different, we could have done that different but we just weren't good enough in the ninety minutes.

We gave them too much respect I'd say on the ball but we just needed to be better and take the game to them more.

Alex Iwobi's red card?

I felt after their first goal we responded well, I thought we would have had a lot more chances.

Of course that happening is a blow to us and  it made the game harder because we were chasing the game with ten men and it's a lot easier for them because of the extra man.

Where do Nigeria go from here?

We need to dust yourself off, we need to go again, we just need to keep pushing and stay together as a team.

Ifeanyi Emmanuel