World football governing body FIFA will next month announce the top five seeds for the African zone of the 2018 World Cup qualifying tournament with Nigeria most likely to miss out.

FIFA will announce the top seeds between June 8 and 10 ahead of the main draw on June 24 in Cairo, Egypt.

The qualifiers to be played on a league basis of 20 teams divided into five groups will begin in October with the winners of the five groups qualifying for Russia 2018.

Experts say the current FIFA rankings will be one of the yardsticks to be used and this will most certainly work against Nigeria, who are now a disappointing 14th ranked team in Africa and are not likely to achieve any remarkable jump by the June rankings.

Africa’s top five ranked teams by this month are Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana , Senegal and Egypt in that order.

Previous World Cup records will also be taken into consideration and this could well help Nigeria’s cause after they reached the Round of 16 in Brazil two years ago.

With the seedings, Africa’s top teams will avoid each other on the road to the next World Cup in Russia. 

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