By Ikeddy Isiguzo Families – People with close affinity, usually through birth or marriage, but also loosely used to define relationships we have cultivated to the point that we see people involved in them as very close to us.

I CANNOT claim to know what informed the decision of Sports Minister Ibrahim Bio to convene a sports summit. What we cannot deny however, is that if the man has chosen that line of action in the little time that he would spend around sports to let us talk, we should permit him.

SOME cruel jokes have emerged in the light of the departure of the Ministers of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. They became jobless on March 17. There was even a debate whether they had any job in the first place.

A CHANCE meeting with Coach Shuaibu Amodu last Friday was a good opportunity to know his inner thoughts as he is again denied a place in the country’s World Cup party. He suffered the same fate in 2002.

WILLY Bazuaye epitomises the best and worst of the fate of Nigerian athletes. A former international, a coach with the Eagles, especially the U-20 team that won at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, he has been down with stroke since 2003.

THERE must be a limit to the cynicism we are allowing to ruin our football. What is really wrong in Dr. Bolaji Ojo-Oba, Secretary-General of the Nigeria Football (Federation) Association selecting the players for Eagles next international friendly? Peter Rufai, the one we call Dodomayana, one of our best goalkeepers ever, is opposed to the idea. I cannot understand his grouse.

ALHAJJ Issa Hayatou has been President of CAF since March 1988 almost 22 years ago. Some of today’s players in Angola had not been born then. Hayatou was his country’s 400m and 800m and member of the national basketball team of Cameroon at the 1st All Africa Games in Brazzaville. He was President of Cameroun Football Federation when he assumed the CAF presidency.

STEPHEN Okechukwu Keshi requires little introduction. I suppose the authorities of Nigerian football need to know him, if they were serious about the things they should do. If not for few hitches that attended his efforts in Togo, he would have taken Togo to the 2006 World Cup as the coach. He qualified Togo for the World Cup then the troubles followed.

THERE are reasons to worry this Christmas than whether there would be lots to eat and drink. If your thing is sports, you cannot be thinking of Christmas without lots of space for January 10, when the Nations Cup commences in Angola.

By Ikeddy Isiguzo THOSE in the group dubbed Elders of the Nigeria Olympic Committee deserve commendation for stopping the proposed NOC elections from holding in Dutse, Jigawa State last Wednesday. Fears that the elections would have finally buried the NOC were real. The titanic contest between the Minister of Sports/Chairman of the National Sports Commission, […]