Nigeria’s Flamingos’ duo Oluwakemi Adegbuyi and Onyinyechi Opara were named Most Valuable Player and best goalkeeper respectively, at the just concluded 2026 WAFU B U17 Girls Cup in Côte d’Ivoire.
The Flamingos rounded off the tournament with a dominant 4-0 win against Togo to be crowned champions on Sunday.
At the end of the tournament the organisers announced Adegbuyi as the best player while teammate Opara was awarded the golden glove.
Adegbuyi ended the competition with four goals couple with assists, helping the Flamingos win all their five games.
Also this year, Adegbuyi won the WAFU-B Women’s Champions League Qualifiers Player of the Tournament and the 2025/26 NWFL Premiership Player of the Season.
Also Read: 2026 U-17 WWC: Flamingos Want To Make History In Morocco — Busari
As for Opara she kept four clean sheets in the five games she featured in for Nigeria.
Flamingos topped with 15 points, Ghana was second with 12 points, in third place was Burkina Faso who got nine points, Côte d’Ivoire finished placed fourth with six points, Togo with three points were fifth and Niger Republic placed bottom with zero point.
Up next for the Flamingos is the U-17 women’s World Cup which will run from October 17th to November 7th in Morocco.
The Flamingos are in Group B with North Korea, Poland and Puerto Rico. The Flamingos will begin their campaign against Poland on October 17.
The team has been to every edition of the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup missing only the 2018 edition.
Before the 2022 edition, they’ve only gotten as far as the quarterfinals in the 2010, 2012 and 2014 editions respectively.
They broke this “jinx” in 2022 by defeating USA in the quarterfinals via penalties after an entertaining and tightly-closed contest during regulation time which ended 1–1, and won bronze by beating Germany in the third place match.
By James Agberebi
