Giants linebacker Bobby Okereke also serves as GM of Nigerian flag football team

Bobby Okereke likes his team. It’s young and a little inexperienced, but it has promise and a strong spirit. One deficiency worries him, though.

“Quarterback play is probably our biggest area for improvement,” he said. “We have some great athletes, a lot of raw, untapped potential . . . We just have to find a quarterback.”

Don’t worry. He wasn’t talking about the Giants, the team for which he is a starting linebacker and the defensive captain, although at some points in recent seasons, he very well could’ve been.

No, this time Okereke was discussing the skills and hopes of the Nigerian national flag football team for which he is the general manager and ambassador.

The team that, unlike recent vintages of the Giants, has a championship to boast. Nigeria won the inaugural IFAF African Championship in Cairo, Egypt, in June, with Okereke there guiding and rooting for them.

It is, Okereke told Newsday after one of the Giants’ early training camp practices, his “football side-quest,” a passion project in which he and several other Nigerian-born or Nigerian-American players in the NFL have become involved.

Okereke, whose parents emigrated from Nigeria to the United States before he was born, doesn’t play for the team now. His role is mostly helping to spread knowledge of the sport, do some fundraising and cheer them on.

But if by some chance Nigeria qualifies for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles — where flag football will be a recognized sport for the first time — we could see the likes of Okereke, David Njoku of the Browns, Chidobe Awuzie of the Ravens and Ifeatu Melifonwu of the Dolphins on the roster.

“If it got to that point,” Okereke said of Nigeria qualifying for the Olympics, “I would love to play. I’d love to represent Nigeria. I think that’s probably the most American thing I can do is try to compete and try to bring excellence.”

Right now, though, the national flag team is composed almost exclusively of Nigerian residents, many of whom are relatively new to American football. So is Nigeria good enough to even think about the 2028 Games?

“I mean, they won,” he said of the June championship. “Yeah, they’re good.”

That African title earned Nigeria an automatic berth in next summer’s IFAF World Championships in Germany. If Nigeria does well enough in that tournament, the team will be L.A.-bound . . . and the sudden influx of NFL talent could even make it a surprise medal contender.

“Now that we have awareness, all you need is a Nigerian passport to play,” said Okereke, who hopes to maintain his front-office role throughout the process. “Nigerian-American players who played in college, the CFL, AFL, whatever, they can come to Nigeria for a training camp to compete for the chance to play.”

Okereke said former Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora, who now serves as the lead ambassador for NFL Africa, who steered him toward his involvement with the Nigerian team. Umenyiora has been working to spread the sport of football in Africa for many years.

The NFL is behind those efforts, too, not only because it expands a consumer base but because it helps open a pipeline of talent for their playing ranks.

Nigerian-Americans are the third-largest demographic in the NFL behind white and Black players, so there certainly will be a large pool to pick from. Eight Nigerian-born players were selected in the 2025 NFL Draft alone, and that doesn’t include first- and second-generation Nigerian-Americans such as Okereke.

“When you look at Africa as a whole, there is so much talent and so much opportunity here,” Umenyiora said. “We just have to give them a chance to dream. So having [flag football] in the Olympics and having the first competition here shows it is possible, shows it can be done and that everybody can have the opportunity to play this wonderful game.”

Two years ago, Okereke went to Nigeria with Umenyiora and others to offer several camps and clinics. This summer, Okereke went to Africa again. His 2025 tour included more time in Nigeria — he even ran an event at the secondary school that his father attended — and the journey to Egypt for the continental championships. In the final, Nigeria beat Egypt, 13-12. The Nigerian women’s team also won the title with a 26-12 triumph over Morocco.

“Getting an actual football in the hands of those kids who have never seen a ball like that — maybe they watched it on TV but have never really played with it — and getting them to learn to throw a spiral, how to catch, just getting them accustomed to the ball, is the beginning,” Okereke said. “There are different movement styles. A lot of players there are soccer players and they move like it, but if you get them as young kids cutting and jumping and doing the different juke moves that football players make, it acclimatizes them to the game.”

Okereke said his parents didn’t have any exposure to American football growing up in Nigeria, but they obviously have come to “love” the sport through their son. That’s an evolution Okereke hopes he can continue to stoke, not just for his family but for an entire nation. Maybe even a continent.

Okereke also said he is completely focused on the Giants and his upcoming third season with them. There are, however, occasional emails and video meetings that he’ll continue to attend to for his side gig.

Next summer, he’ll be back to thinking about his “other” team on a more regular basis.

“It’ll be tough competition,” he said of the looming World Championships. “But we’re putting in the work for Nigeria to be a tough competitor. Osi is doing great work with NFL Africa. Whatever I can do to help, I will. It’s just spreading the love of the game.”