Efforts to reform football should'nt be used to grab power

We have seen this script before. Engineer chaos in a system then take full advantage to take over football leadership.

In 2011, Sam Nyamweya was declared the winner of the football elections which hitherto had seen two rival bodies, Football Kenya Limited (FKL) and Kenya Football Federation (KFF) claim to be the bona fide managers of the game in Kenya.

For a period of close to seven years, stemming from the football elections of 2004, this battle for control saw the tussle go all the way to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and initiated FIFA’s intervention, which culminated in a unified election and the creation of FKF with Nyamweya as it first President.

What baffled many is how in a field that had the late Mohammed Hatimy, Ambrose Rachier and Hussein Mohammed, Nyamweya emerged victorious. It was a simple plan.

KFF convinced the Electoral board that they had more clubs playing in its leagues than those playing under FKL.

With clubs all over the country being allowed to vote for the candidates directly, Nyamweya’s KFF laid claim to the vote-rich grassroots clubs.  

With the delegate system, which had been the norm suspended for this elections, every vote from the club delegates counted directly and it is this method that Nyamweya used to pull the rug from under the feet of his competitors. 

In the most recent elections, Nyamweya was among the contestants who withdrew from the ballot, but not without having a sinister plan in place.

Almost immediately County Associations which claim to be aligned with the Sports Act 2013 have sprung up in some counties across the country.

The plan again is simple. By claiming that these associations are the authentic managers of the game at the grassroots, he hopes to create enough confusion to ensure that they get allowed to vote at the elections that are being planned by the caretaker committee appointed by the Sports CS Amina Mohamed recently.

Almost immediately Nyamweya and his cohorts organised a meeting in Kakamega ostensibly to put forward a candidate for the FKF presidency. 

But even in the current circumstances that our football finds itself in, the current constitution of FKF should be adhered to, even as the people who will be mandated to run the game work to align it with Sports Act in the areas where it falls short.

Creating confusion by introducing delegates who do not meet the constitutional threshold will lead to chaos in Kenyan football at a time when an opportunity has been presented to reset football leadership in the country.

The Ministry of Sports should be wary of attempts to use the office of the Registrar of Sports to sanitize this process by declaring these County associations and their clubs as being eligible to vote in the forthcoming elections and thereby frustrating the efforts of the football fraternity to effect change in the management of the game. 
Further, the Ministry should on its own carry out an investigation to authenticate claims of the existence of these County Associations, whether elections were conducted according to the laws they purport to follow and to establish that indeed league matches are being played under this County Associations in all 47 counties in the Republic of Kenya. 

The efforts to change the course of our football should not be used by the some opportunistic officials for a power grab.