IT was simply amazing watching the Eagles in their games against Ethiopia, then Kenya. I am not referring to the goals that have beclouded us about the team and our preparations. There are issues which we must forget, it seems, because the team won.

ONE chilly December night, 27 years ago, Emmanuel Chagu, former national basketball coach and I were reviewing Nigeria’s basketball over drinks at the Bauchi Sports Club. Chagu, he passed on some years back, charged my anticipation as he kept telling me he had a surprise for me.

WITH only 25 days to the first in the series of elections that will hopefully produce new winners, new ideas for the country. Candidates are taking their campaigns round the country. Their concerns are wide, the issues are being raised and the cadence of their discussions denotes the importance of the issues.

THE second edition of the AIT Football Awards will hold on Tuesday March 8 in Port Harcourt. The awards are small beginnings that point a direction for us, if only we are willing to recognise the fact that football (and sports) requires different approaches for the attainment of the results we eagerly expect.

THIS piece is going to press 72 hours before the elections in Khartoum, in which Nigeria’s Ibrahim Galadima is a candidate. The concern here is not whether he wins or not. I am more bothered about the way we are, the way we elect to be and the consequences for Nigeria.

THOUSANDS of people trooped out on last week Wednesday night expecting all their problems will be solved once they watched the Eagles play against Sierra Leone in Lagos. Their expectations failed woefully and the complaints have not ceased since then.

WE are making progress in our sports (football), depending on who is compiling the scores and the indices he is using. I take consolations in gains, no matter how minuscule they may seem, though I am prompt to admit too that some of these advances are like the movement of the pendulum – swinging all the time in the same directions.

UCHE Okafor is one of those fellows you never knew when you met him. Could it be during his days at ACB Football Club. He was quiet, self-effacing and good at his game, yet he appeared at a point stars filled the Nigerian firmament. I have nudged myself a couple of times since the news of her demise, particularly the circumstances of it.

THE Maigari_led Executive Committee of the NFA sacked Davidson Owumi and not the Congress of the NFA. Those who were present said the matter was not brought up at anytime. So why did the Executive Committee smuggle in its position and make it look like it was a Congress decision?

IT will not be long before the furore over the death of Emmanuel Ogoli of Bayelsa United is forgotten. Soon he will become only a reference when another league death occurs. There are precedents, too numerous to recount.

WOULD England be complaining if it won the bid for the 2018 World Cup? It is most unlikely the English would have said some of the things they are saying about FIFA, a body that they support to the hilt.

NIGERIA is a lucky country. Any country so lucky should also know there is a limit to luck. One cannot be lucky forever or stretch it until it saps.Table tennis tells this story in its most disturbing terms.

SOME time in 1985, when the debate about the ban of some New Nigerian players from the Eagles was raging, it was difficult to get a player, especially in the central defence which Stephen Keshi was dominating. Keshi was one of those banned.

THERE is a sense in which we must learn to extend our gratitude to the Falcons. Their victory in South Africa is a statement on commitment and passion.

FRIENDSHIP is a word that has fallen into frequent disrepute over abuses that have become part of it. I am therefore a bit reluctant to describe people as friends even if we so regard ourselves.

Allegations of corruption against FIFA are not new. One of the major ones was against Sepp Blatter in 1998 during his campaign for the FIFA presidency. He was, along with his godfather, the departing FIFA President Joao Havelange, accused of bribing delegates to the FIFA Congress to vote for Blatter who wriggled out of the morass with claims that the money was federations to develop the game.

ALL that one can do at this moment is refrain from commenting on the Dr. Amos Adamu saga, out of respect for the injunction from FIFA that it is investigating the affair and secondly from the point that the evidence is not readily available to one outside what is being splashed in the foreign media and the internet.

ALL that one can do at this moment is refrain from commenting on the Dr. Amos Adamu saga, out of respect for the injunction from FIFA that it is investigating the affair and secondly from the point that the evidence is not readily available to one outside what is being splashed in the foreign media and the internet.

THE Commonwealth Games have been the Games for us. There were some surprises about the performance of Team Nigeria . With the minimal preparations, Nigeria was on the way to her best Commonwealth Games since her first appearance in 1950.

THERE was a sense in which it seemed that some members of the Commonwealth did not want to see Indian host the Commonwealth Games that began with a magnificent opening ceremony last Sunday.

LAST week I asked for involvement of the sports community in the politics that would produce leaders in 2011. It is obvious that sports would be neglected again if those who are its stakeholders do not prod candidates in the elections to create platforms to develop sports.

IT was exciting listening to the challenges of sports (football) at the public hearing that the Sports Committee of the House of Representatives had on the faltering fortunes of Nigerian football. So many perspectives, many ideas and in some cases outright jocularity ruled the day when I made an appearance on Thursday.

ELECTIONS rule and ruin us. Things would remain in that frame for some time. The massive hurricane of poverty sweeping across Nigeria expresses itself through several anomalies.

PEOPLE may not fully realize the importance of what the Falconets, our U-20 female football team did in Germany . The loss to the Germans in Sunday’s final does not in any way diminish the achievement of the team that has made the point that Africa has a future in female football one area Nigeria has dominated in the continent without making much impact on the global stage.

NIGERIANS are in celebration after the scintillating performance of the Falconets in the FIFA U-20 World Cup. The 4-2 (penalty shoot outs) defeat of the USA in the quarter-finals of the competition is epochal, not because for the first time Nigeria would be playing in the semi-final, but the expectation that women’s football would get respect for the first time.

Olusegun Obasanjo, then President, created the illegality on the eve of his departure from office. The excuse was that government was trimming the number of Ministries.

Football is a victim. Its tormentors are the victors. The minor disagreements between the impeached Nigeria Football Association, NFA, bosses and those who have firmly grabbed the reins of football are part of the class fight for the sustenance of chaos in our football.

Let us learn from history. When GENOCIDE was being committed in Rwanda in 1994, US-led United Nations did not want to intervene and so tried to deny that genocide was taking place.