Nickel (Ni)-based materials are promising electrocatalysts for the urea electrooxidation reaction, as the in situ formed NiOOH species on their surface during operation are catalytically active sites. In this work, phytate-coordinated Ni foam (PA-NF) is shown to deliver a high catalytic performance toward the urea electrooxidation reaction, with a low potential of 1.38 V at 10 mA/cm², a low Tafel slope of 64.1 mV/dec, and superior catalytic stability; a performance comparable to state-of-the-art Ni-based catalysts. Electrochemical characterization alongside the control experiments revealed that such a high performance could be ascribed to kinetically-accelerated surface reconstruction and the enrichment of NiOOH active species on the PA-NF surface during the electrooxidation of urea owing to PA-coordination induced upshift of d-band center of Ni sites. Overall, a new strategy is provided for the design of an efficient and universal Ni-based catalyst for the electrooxidation of urea, which can also be extended to other transition-metal-based systems.