August 8 – Members of the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA), who are also referred to as football stakeholders, are demanding an emergency extraordinary congress within three days’ time amid the chaos and confusion engulfing the country’s warring footballing factions.
The request comes after FIFA gave Isha Johansen the green light to remain as interim federation president even though her mandate has expired.
FIFA says the current SLFA executive committee should remain in power until integrity checks are carried out on current and future officials pending elections.
Last month FIFA ruled that an electoral congress had to be delayed until a task force it set up carries out those checks. Johansen, who has faced a barrage of criticism from opponents in her attempt to weed out corruption and match-fixing, is a member of FIFA’s member associations committee which took the decision and which is chaired by Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Ahmad Ahmad whom Sierra Leone supported when he upset Issa Hayatou to become Confederation of African Football boss.
FIFA said at the time that a Memorandum of Understanding, which included agreement on integrity checks and was signed by its general secretary Fatma Samoura, Sierra Leone’s minister of sport Ahmed Khanou and Johansen “had not been adhered to”. That is apparently still the case.
Johansen’s opponents are crying foul by insisting she should hand over the reign of power since her four-year term of office expired on August 3.
Now it emerges that in a press conference hosted at the SLFA Headquarters last Friday, the SLFA membership, who boast 30 out of the 35 members, called for a congress to be held at the latest by August 11.
The chairman of the SLFA membership, Idrissa Mago Tarawallie, a fierce opponent of Johansen, reportedly stated that because her four-year term had expired, neither she nor her two vice presidents had any “legal authority to represent the FA in any capacity and under any circumstance within or outside Sierra Leone for any international event.”
The request for an imminent extraordinary congress came before FIFA’s ruling to “continue with the current leadership and management” and is therefore unlikely to come to fruition but it only serves to re-inforce the total disunity among the various parties. According to Emmanuel Saffa Abdulai, another member of the stakeholders body, going to court will be an option if no congress takes place.
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