Soccer News of Friday, 7 April 2006

Source: --

Infighting in GFA?

... Ibrahim Stripped Of CAF C?ssioner Status?
Three months after the elections of the President of the Executive Committee, acrimony doesn?t seem to be subsiding within the various forces that contested the elections.

And at a time when stakeholders are craving for cordiality, some leading members of the Executive Committee are alleged to have delivered a sledge hammer blow to the CAF ambitions of the Chairman of the erstwhile Executive Council of the Ghana Football Association,Mr Y. A. Ibrahim.

Ibrahim was one of those who contested the Presidency but failed to clinch the slot.

In what smacks of an act of pettiness, Ibrahim?s name has been removed from the list of the CAF Match Commissioners in a manner that has raised eyebrows among a section of the Executive Commitee.

According to Graphic Sports sources, Mr Kwesi Nyantakyi, President of the Executive Committee, and the General Secretary of the Ghana Football Association, Mr Kofi Nsiah have effectively taken the slot.

The turbulence which heralded the election of the president last December has consigned the soccer fraternity into factional enclaves, prompting the newly-elected 24 members to move for ways to reconcile the feuding factions.

Indeed, part of the schemes manifested in the decision by the committee to narrow the search of the Vice-President to a consensus.

While pursuing these moves, the members expected that the new FA would ensure that Ibrahim kept his position on the CAF. But at the last meeting of the Committee members were dismayed to find out that the list supposed to have been approved by the FA did not include Ibrahim?s name.

The Confederation of African Football as part of its convention, co-opts officers serving in the various national FAs. But the process requires approval from such FAs.

For the past four years Ibrahim had been on the CAF Match Commissioners list by virtue of his position as Chairman of the Executive Council of the FA.

The other member was Mr Emmanuel Owusu-Ansah, a former Vice Chairman of the FA. now Deputy Attorney General.

Ibrahim appears to be unware of this new twist when the Graphic Sports reached him on phone.

?I have not been officially informed by either the CAF or the FA, but I have heard it on one of the radio sports programmes,? he stated.

According to him he had already served as a Match Commissioner in one of the CAF inter-Club matches between Asec and East Highlanders this year, saying his removal was news to him.

Interestingly, Worlanyo Agra, former General Secretary of the FA, was on the CAF Committee before he lost his job, but the Ben Koufie administration approved of his position.