By Paul Nicholson
August 16 – FIFA has again stepped into the Sierra Leone row to protect Isha Johansen, the SLFA president that the world governing body recognises but who football stakeholders and government officials in Sierra Leone argue is holding the position in an unelected capacity after her mandate ended August 3.
FIFA says that the demand by sports minister Ahmed Khanou “does not reflect the agreed road map which was initiated in order to address the conflicts and problems in Sierra Leone football.”
The congress that should have taken place last month has been indefinitely postponed by FIFA who are insisting that integrity checks are completed before elections at the next congress can be held.
When Johansen was elected as SLFA president she swept into power promising to rid the federation of the corruption that had plagued its administration and the influence of match-fixing within the game.
The implication is that at the end of her first term those corruption threats are still present, and hence FIFA’s insistence on integrity checks.
FIFA has told the Sierra Leone government “to abstain from taking any decisions contrary to this established process, particularly through the imposition of an ordinary congress on the SLFA,” reported the BBC.
Integrity checks generally have a flexible interpretation in Africa and increasingly so for FIFA who have been accused of using them to rule out candidates who the executive do not want walking the world governing body’s corridors of power. The regional confederation CAF had no requirement to run integrity checks before its recent election that saw Ahmad Ahmad elected as the new president and the installation of an executive committee most noteworthy for its tight connections to and lobbying for FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino.
Johansen is very much part of that new cabal at CAF and higher up the football food chain serves on FIFA’s member associations committee that is headed by Ahmad Ahmad. It is a committee whose composition has caused comment because of the high number of smaller (in terms of football economics and participation) federation representatives.
A FIFA delegation is expected in mid-September though probably what is really required is the completion of integrity checks and a date set for the SLFA electoral congress. FIFA, reported by the BBC, says it is still “committed to working with the Sierra Leone government, the SLFA and all goodwill organs (notably the National Sports Council) to bring sanity to football in Sierra Leone.”
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