IT will be pointless counting the number of committees that have looked through Nigerian football. One more committee will not do any harm if it can proffer solutions to the viral challenges Nigerian football faces.

INJURY can devastate an athlete. The lucky one who recovers and returns to competition fails to realise what the others suffer.

STANDARDS are almost impossible to keep in Nigeria. In the instances that we opted for low standards, we are still unable to keep the marks that we have so lowly set for ourselves. The National Sports Festival is suffering the same affliction.

I CANNOT lie, I am happy about the cauldron Nigerian football has driven itself into without a possibility of escape from sanctions from FIFA, the Nigerian public and government.

I WRITE about Joseph Sepp Blatter as if he is dead. It is deliberate. Blatter has been in FIFA in the past 36 years. He inherited his iron fist from the Belgian-Brazilian Jean Marie Jo o Faustino Godefroid Havelange, who competed in water polo and swimming in the 1936 and 1952 Olympic Games. Now 95, Havelange, who ruled FIFA for 24 years, was deep in the scandals around the 1998 transmutation of Blatter from Secretary-General to President of FIFA. Other re-elections of Blatter (2002, 2007) have swirled more scandals.

SOME may not notice the gradual death of football, which will ultimately affect the health of sports. Some think the growing number of factions in the Nigeria Football Association (it insists on calling itself Nigeria Football Federation, illegal as it knows the name is) does not mean anything.

SAMSON Siasia has dangerous friends. They could ruin him. I do not know their names. He may not even know them personally, but they are those who see nothing wrong in whatever the coach does – they can explain it, and try to enforce their position on others.

WE may be getting somewhere with this issue of the age of Nigerian football players, or sports people altogether. Not too long ago, depending on your real age, Nigerian players had no reason to tamper with their age since most competitions were open – if you were good enough you weighed in. Juniors, intermediates, and seniors competed for the few opportunities.

AN organisation like the Nigeria Football Association, which excels in duplicity, cannot act differently no matter how serious a matter is or its implications for the country.

WE have spent years agonising over funding of sports. The illusion is that governments spend billions of Nigeria on sports. It is an illusion because the money is released late and the funding takes no proper account of sports timetables and the implications of the funding system.