Former African Footballer of the Year Victor Ikpeba has stressed that the Super Eagles players should be considered the major culprits for the country's failure to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, saying that they didn't take the game seriously.

And to buttress his point, the 1996 Atlanta Olympics gold medalist and Monaco's all-time top scorer in European competitions with fourteen goals narrated how the Super Eagles players stepped out on to the MKO Abiola Stadium pitch with their phones to take selfies before the start of the second leg tie against Ghana.

Nigeria won't be one of Africa's five representatives at the 2022 World Cup after they were eliminated in the final round of qualifiers via the away goal rule.

Nigerian Federation boss Amaju Pinnick and former caretaker manager Augustine Eguavoen have been getting a lot of stick from fans in the aftermath of the 1-1 draw with the Black Stars, but Ikpeba thinks the Super Eagles players should take the lion's share of the blame.

Speaking on SuperSport's Monday Night Football monitored by allnigeriasoccer.com, Ikpeba said : "Let me give you a statistic. We were involved in 1994, 1998, 2002, we were not involved in 2006. We were back in 2010, 2014 and 2018, so every fourth edition we are involved in the World Cup we don't qualify but we should have been there.

"I said the NFF have to take responsibility, it was a failure from the NFF, from the manager, the coaches but more especially the players.

"Just before the game you see these players came into the pitch to take selfies, I have never seen that in my life before.