By Zainab Joaque
The past year has not been a year of sports prowess in our country, for many reasons, but notably due to the Ebola outbreak. Most disciplines were denied the opportunity of participating in international competitions due to the epidemic.
But before now sports has been going through turbulence in Sierra Leone, mainly as a result of maladministration, incompetence, etc. Consequently, all sporting disciplines today face many challenges. We have had stagnant participation at international level. In must cases we just go to participate, and that is affecting sports from growing.
As a sporting nation we need to give sport far more attention than it currently enjoys, and administrators are central to this. They should outline their programme and vision for the different sporting disciplines. With the prevailing situation nearly all the resources for sports are going to football, leaving the other disciplines to fend for themselves. Yet inadequate planning and lack of openness in the past few years has left the football game in the country prostrate with practically nothing to boast of in terms of achievement, instead, the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) has been embroiled in power tussle.
No common purpose
The fragmented and complicated administrative structure is impacting greatly on the improvement of the sport. We lack, as a country, a common purpose and cohesion at the top and this is what is demonstrating itself at the SLFA.
I think all associations should review and evaluate their objectives and see what options are there for them to make recommendations for improving their participation in international events, so that they can actually compete rather than just participate. We need to start from the grassroots level.
I will encourage all administrators in sports to meet with an open mind and a willingness to embrace change, in the best interests of sports in Sierra Leone.
Compliment
One sporting discipline that has been flying the country’s flag high is Volleyball. Amidst limited resources available to them, they have proved skeptics wrong that you can create the desired impact you want with the meager resources.
“The turnaround and change in volleyball successes is evident by the series of recognition we have received both locally and internationally, instigated by the SLVA, and [it] shows how quickly positive change can occur with the right mindset,” said Ahmed Khanou, SLVA Secretary General.
Capacity Building
The National Olympic Committee (NOC) should start working with national associations to establish sport academies as part of their youth development policies.
There is only one sporting academy in the country and that is for football, which can only boast of a tiny fraction of football players.
There is no doubt going to be the issue of meeting the huge financial demands involved here, but I think the NOC could engage these disciplines to talk with their global governing bodies to assist in setting up academies so that in the near future they can raise players, athletes and teams good enough to challenge for honours alongside their counterparts from other regions of the continent. This, to me, is the only way forward in dragging sports from the abject quagmire in which it has found itself in the past decades in this country.
Power struggle
Football is the most loved sport in the country. However it continues to occupy the spotlight locally and internationally for all the wrong reasons. The power struggle among the administrators has unfortunately engulfed the SLFA, its stakeholders and now the ministry of Sports, and this has had adverse effect on the overall sporting sector.
It was hoped that the incidents that marred the election of the current SLFA executive in August 2013, followed by the commencement of the FA Cup and then an incomplete Premier League, will serve as a pathway to peace which would have been slowly achieved. But, with the same issues consuming the football family going on for two years now, nothing seems to change as its members keep dissolving the executive committee.
Football fans are still hopeful though that this impasse will finally come to an end. There is an air of expectation among stakeholders who are eager for the battle to gain ownership of their association to begin.
The rivalry that ensued between the Ministry of Sports (MOS) and the SLFA is nothing good to write home about, as these two bodies have been embroiled in power tussle since the issue of coaches appointment came up. The attitude of Sports Minister Paul Kamara stoked a personality clash between him and the FA boss Isha Johansen. And the less we talk about the motives behind this, the better. However, this scrimmage led to our country being put under the international lens of having fielded two set of coaches for a match in Cameroon, and as a result of the FA’s insistence that they are in control of organizing matches and not the ministry, officials and journalists were detained in their hotel and subsequently ‘deported’ by the Cameroonian Immigration Department for the non-inclusion of their names on the delegation list presented by the FA.
The sports journalists were therefore not left out of the ensuing battle with some of them taking sides and serving as ammunition needed for the battle ahead.
Accountability
The FA has been asked by their members to call congress and the back and forth in that communication has brought us to where we are today. But with the intervention of State House a consensus was agreed upon that the President of the NOC should serve as moral guarantor to see both parties go to Congress at a date that was set aside by the FA for April 17-19 in Makeni.
The debate generated by this decision had hardly petered-out when football stakeholders began a vigorous campaign to bring their executive committee to account for their stewardship, which eventually led to the abrupt end of the Ordinary Congress that they converge for in Makeni and had to be postponed for eight weeks.
The irony in this whole circus is that the ministry and some members who were the architect of this SLFA executive are now in league with those who feel disenfranchised at the time in calling for the Isha Johansen executive to come and account to them. After the botched congress in Makeni, more than two-thirds of the members have signed a resolution dissolving the entire executive committee and setting up a nine-man team to man the affairs of the FA.
We are putting ears to the ground to actually ascertain whether this decision will hold and that the ‘Queen’ be thrown out.
The FA has kept a sealed lip over the decision of its members, and the interim body is presently working on putting a team together for the qualifiers. The truth is that the executive, the ministry and football stakeholders have failed the people that love this game. But somehow, these so called administrators running football have left the objective and passion of the game behind.
Apart from the U17 (Sierra Stars) campaign, where some amount of professionalism and excellence where pursued with vigor and the results are there for all to see, football in this country has been placed in an unfortunate position of being saddled with incompetent administrators whose interest is to line their pockets, enjoy the spoils of office and make the players and fans scapegoats every time things go wrong.
Sierra Leone is supposed to be at the top in football development in Africa, yet our rankings both in Africa and the world are dwindling at every announcement. With an endless list of talents at our disposal, we are left with sequences of disappointment and chaos.
Previously we have been seeing the FA and the ministry in league; now the tides have turned and the stakeholders that the ministry was fighting with in favour of the FA are now in the good books of the ministry.
Football can only thrive under a peaceful atmosphere and good leadership. What we need as a nation is to help wield the big stick on the backs of the sycophantic administrators who always cry wolf. We need to help inject sanity into the system and have more decisive steps to flush away incompetent administrators retarding the wheel of progress in the country.
Conclusion
Whilst there were some efforts from different sporting disciplines, there are a number of systemic issues facing our sports. The governance structures of these associations and the selection process for participation in international competitions needs an independent review.
Moving forward, it will be wise for the ministry to equally support other disciplines rather than giving all the funds to football which has gravely affected the participation of other sporting disciplines in different competitions.
Investing in sports is crucial in reaching our desired goal as a country, by setting up programmes that bring different sports to new places; which will support our existing and developing athletes as well as programmes that can reach community members, that can help develop our coaches and look after our athletes.
© Politico 14/05/15
