ADMIRABLE efforts are always being made to resuscitate the National Sports Festival, but it is clear the days of the National Sports Festival, as a productive venture are shortening. The increasing low standards, cheating, corruption, poor officiating and can only turn the festival into a huge ceremony with all the trappings in place. We are witnessing one in Port Harcourt.

THE Nigeria Football Association headquarters, more famously known as the Glass House, can attest to the lyrics of Peter Tosh. Blows are being thrown in various directions, even by those who cannot take blows.

We should appropriate some things as national assets. Among them is the social responsibility agenda of some of key organisations in our environment. On my mind today is Mobil Athletics Championships that the oil company has sponsored for decades and which it said it had finally decided to stop.

ONE reason the challenges Nigerian football is facing will not go away quickly is that people are more interested in justifying illegality, sharing blames, shifting blames and pretending nobody is wrong. The denials are worsening – there is no crisis in Nigerian football, is a regular refrain.

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.

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.