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A NEW SHERIFF COMES TO TOWN AT CAF

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BY KUNLE SOLAJA

The Confederation of African Football, CAF, enters a new and unprecedented phase in its 62 years of existence, as an external body, FIFA, will govern it.

From this Thursday and for six months, Fatma Samoura, the FIFA General Secretary will oversee the confederation as FIFA General Delegate, a thinly veiled nomenclature of General Overseer.

Sports Village Square recalls that the immediate former FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, described the take-over of CAF as colonization. Even the UEFA boss, Aleksander Čeferin, initially opposed the FIFA move, but was persuaded to endorse it.

By her designation, Samoura will run CAF almost as a sole administrator. The events leading to her being seconded to CAF were predicated by allegations of financial mismanagement in the confederation among other allegations levied against Ahmad, the president.

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The joint statement by CAF and FIFA was silent on the position of the CAF president, the executive committee members as well as the General Secretary.

But informed sources disclosed to www.sportsvillagesquare.com that Ahmad is good as being referred to as ‘former president’ considering the weight of allegations against him.

RELATED STORIES: https://www.sportsvillagesquare.com/2019/07/16/post-afcon-implosion-looms-in-caf-as-ahmad-may-be-kicked-out/

The Ethics Committee of FIFA is currently investigating him. Last June in Paris, he was briefly detained by the anti graft police before being released without charges.  

It is believed that the CAF Executive Committee members decided to invite the FIFA General Secretary to take over the administration to prevent the former 1st Vice President, Amaju Pinnick from running the Confederation, even in acting capacity.

That was the underlying reason why Ahmad had to ‘reshuffle’ cabinet on the eve of the final match of 2019 Africa Cup of Nations.

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It was gathered that the CAF Executive Committee has broken into linguistic blocs and only grudgingly made South Africa’s Danny Jordaan the 3rd Vice President as the only English speaking person in the top four.

Virtually all the top members of CAF Executive Committee has one allegation or the other tied to them.

It is a situation that may see a clean sweep of a regime that came into power following the ‘overthrown’ of the ‘ancient regime’ of Issa Hayatou.

Fatma Samoura, the new sheriff in town is supposed to conduct a forensic analysis of CAF books.

Already, an advertisement went out on the eve of her ascendance into CAF offices, an advertisement was put up requesting for proposals on restructuring of the confederation. It was signed by the Chief Compliance Officer, Abdulah Moustapha.

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Kunle Solaja is the author of landmark books on sports and journalism as well as being a multiple award-winning journalist and editor of long standing. He is easily Nigeria’s foremost soccer diarist and Africa's most capped FIFA World Cup journalist, having attended all FIFA World Cup finals from Italia ’90 to Qatar 2022. He was honoured at the Qatar 2022 World Cup by FIFA and AIPS.

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