March 15 – The CAF elections last Friday saw a whole suite of FIFA’s favourite Africans jostled into position both at the confederation and as their representatives at FIFA. Among the change was the further rise of Isha Johansen, Sierra Leone’s FA president, at the expense of long term incumbent Lydia Nsekera from Burundi.
The rise of Johansen to the FIFA Council is an interesting study. She first appeared on the Sierra Leone FA scene in 2013 when she stood as a candidate for the presidency – her three rivals for the presidency were all disqualified from running due to links with betting companies and she was elected unopposed.
Married to a Norwegian businessman, her football credentials involved the founding of the FC Johansen club, and which his money supported.
Her term as Sierra Leone president has been controversial – to the point of having been arrested in her own country on alleged corruption charges – and charmed in that FIFA has always been there for her when she needed bailing out or saving.
Johansen has been president the Sierra Leone federation for eight years, having failed to hold an election since she took charge.
It is a federation whose league clubs fail to recognise her legitimacy, where there is no credible register of federation stakeholders, and whose national government has routinely withdrawn funding for national teams, forcing her to request special assistance from CAF – granted by Issa Hayatou when he was president but who she then turned on in favour of championing the now disgraced replacement Ahmad.
At each challenge internally in Sierra Leone she has claimed she is battling against betting corruption (though the only case known took place well before she was in office), and when government has intervened, FIFA has similarly threatened their own sanctions unless government backed off.
The result is there is no meaningful football being developed or played in Sierra Leone on a national level despite FIFA having provided its grant annually, but there is a powerful Sierra Leone football official walking the corridors of Zurich.
FIFA’s executive will likely need her unequivocal support at Council top table and FIFA president Gianni Infantino will certainly need it when it comes to re-election in 2023. Johansen will likely need all of FIFA’s bag of tricks to keep her in place until then. it is the kind of relationship that seems to increasingly characterise the FIFA leadership’s intertwined dealings with its African members.
Johansen’s marriage was husband Arne’s second. His cement business frequently funded her football club and on occasion helped the league with sponsorship. As that money dried up so FIFA’s financial importance took over.
Arne’s first wife, Wenche Elin Eklund, has written a fictional biographical novel of her 20 years in Africa and the departure. It is at times a chilling read. See https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/876332
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