possibility of a criminal trial in a Nigerian court? The only thing that really seemed
to matter to most of our leaders, as I witnessed at the Friendship Hall in Khartoum, was how to share the spoils of power on the CAF and FIFA executive committees – rather than look at the in- terests of the larger commonwealth. Te election of Ghana’s FA president Kwesi Nyantakyi, Zambian FA boss Kalusha Bwalya – the 1988 African Player of the Year – and Leodegar Tenga, the former Tanzania captain, to the new CAF ex- ecutive committee, all new-breed politi- cians, provided little comfort, as the body’s membership is still dominated by the old order. Before the poll, most of the contest-
ants were engaged in late-night caucus meetings, lasting into the early morning. Even paid officials of the CAF secretariat, supposed to be above the political fray, got their hands dirty in the politicking. John Muinjo, president of the Namibia
Football Association, who clearly lost to Zambia’s Kalusha Bwalya in the CAF poll, claimed aides of Issa Hayatou had bluntly told him he was not in the good books of the presidency and must give up on his political ambition. “Te system [African football poli-
tics] doesn’t accommodate people like me. I’m an honest person. I worked very hard and in an ideal situation I was going to win the election… Te only thing that I didn’t do was maybe to pay people to come and vote for me. I don’t have that kind of cash,” Muinjo said. One particular CAF official went as far as working against his own country’s interests, making a 3 am visit to a member of his country’s del- egation on 23 February, to convince him to advise his candidate to step down, as the CAF official was supporting Algeria’s Mohamed Raouraoua; an unethical use of his position. “Certain people are not liked and they
will not make it [into CAF],” Muinjo told New African. “It was not only men- tioned to me alone but it was also men- tioned to other people. Te playing field was not level.” Whilst the secretaries of the various regional football groupings, like WAFU (Te West African Football Union), COSAFA (their Southern African counterparts) and CECAFA (for Central and East Africa), delivered uninspiring
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