I had intended this week’s column for my readers, especially those I cannot reach on phone or by mail. I had wanted to use the space this week to wish all of us a greater 2011, sportswise.

A small story. Tuesday I was in the office of the NFF Deputy Secretary General Technical, Dr. Emmanuel Ikpeme with Chief Onigbinde, and Chairman Christian Chukwu when a colleague ( Journalist ) walked in.

If we believe, we can achieve everything,
Including the impossible. This I know.
So let’s lift up our heads, raise up the flags,
Scream like you are born to win,
This is the sign of victory.’
R. Kelly

DUE to my CAF assignment I could not make the swearing in ceremony of the technical committee of the Nigeria Football federation. I remember calling the chairman of the committee Chris Green to offer my apologies. However, he told me to promise that I will be present for the interview session with the coaches. I promised.

The day is Friday, November 29. Time now is 4pm. I am sitting in my room in Dundee’s Hotel in Lubumbashi, Congo DR. As member of the CAF delegation to the final of the CAF Orange Champion’s League, Africa’s premier club competition.

All efforts to keep myself out of today’s column have proved abortive. Colleagues who thought they could call me up to get scoops have so far being disappointed. On Friday morning one of them called and after talking to me for twenty minutes concluded that I was sitting on the fence.

Let me take us a little back, to the time Alhaji Ibrahim Bio came on board as sports minister. After we had canvassed and fought relentlessly to have “one of our own” as minister, the Yar Adua government obliged with the Tennis Federation boss, Alhaji Sanni Ndanusa and our joy knew no bounds.

The airline “s in flight magazine Msafiri caught my fancy and as I flipped, my eyes rested on an article entitled “KENYA GOLD_the country, the people”. The introduction to the piece will interest you.

performance against his team, was quoted as saying that one day, a referee’s corpse will be picked on the field of play.

Time there was when travelling was fun. Perhaps not anymore.
As a third year student of modern languages in the University of Calabar, we needed to go abroad for a year and I was one of those who benefitted Grenoble, France as destination. So started my romance with passports, visas, tickets, planes, hotels……name it.

Before the calls came there was the joke we were cracking with Tunji Babalola acting Executive secretary of the NPL who had voted during the elections. We said to him that he also stood accused and was likely to be picked up.

Last week I came out with a view that bordered on caution in the handling of the appointment of the next Super Eagles coach. I said the solution to our football woes may not lie in a “good coach”. That no matter how good that coach may be, if the structures are not right, success will not be guaranteed.

Friday in Abuja, in a cab I had hired to take me to the airport, the driver in search of ‘good music’ stumbled on a phone- in programme that was discussing the interview that the NFF (The Federal House of Representatives insist they are NFA) had with Samson Siasia. I told the driver to stop.

I listened as over 80 per cent of the respondents argued and vehemently too that Siasia was worth more than N15 million. That if we could give a failure like Lagerback over N30 million a month, Siasia should collect no less.

I have some fears. The fear that by the time you get to read this column, some of the view points canvassed therein may have been overtaken by events. That is how dynamic the issue is so much that situations change by the minute, by the day. I wish I could hand over this column this week to Alhaji Gara Gombe that incurable critic of the Lulu administration and a crusader for a better football culture.