Kenya: Why Tenga Should Not Take Suffering People for a Ride

Elias Makori

1 May 2011

Nairobi — The events of the last few days in Kenya’s football management have been, to say the least, worrying.

The stake holders’ forum called by the Independent Electoral Board (IEB) and chaired by Tanzania’s Leodegar Tenga last week ended up being a chest-thumping forum with very little achieved, going forward.

While Kenyans are dying to know when the eagerly-awaited national football elections will be held – to help get the game out of its miserable rut – Tenga’s window-dressing session in Nairobi ended up achieving precious little, and merely further covered up the sorry state that’s the country’s game.

That Tenga (also the chairman of the Confederation of East and Central Africa Football Associations – Cecafa), was on April 20 seen dinning with Qatar’s Asian Football Confederation chief Mohammed Bin Hammam, along with some Cecafa members, in Nairobi, raises eyebrows.

Now, Bin Hammam is gunning for the presidency of football’s world governing body, Fifa, and Tenga’s position as head of the 11 or so countries that make up Cecafa is seen as instrumental in the current power battles at Fifa.

Bin Hammam is desperate! The Qatari will oppose the incumbent, Swiss Sepp Blatter, at the June 1 Fifa Congress, and the more votes Tenga can deliver to Bin Hammam from the region, the better for him. Perhaps that explains the Kenyan mess…

Speculation is rife that Tenga and the IEB are deliberately delaying the Kenyan football elections so as not to mess up with Bin Hammam’s election strategy as a new office in Kenyan football will totally upset the Fifa elections gamebook.There are many questions that remain unanswered about the IEB…

First, they set out a road map for the Kenyan elections that would have “culminated in the national polls before the end of April.”

Now that we are in May, what explanation do they have for the delay? Could they be buying time to get to the Fifa elections with their game plan intact?

Where are the IEB offices and to whom do they (IEB) account to the monies (reported to be Sh24 million) they are using to put together the elections?

Why have they, hitherto, not set up a tribunal to rule on election petitions? Why is the Sports Minister silent on the “election road map?”

Where is the official list of bona-fide clubs that will be allowed to vote according to the IEB’s electoral code? Indeed, is the IEB capable of holding a free and fair election of Kenyan football?

Meanwhile, Tenga was reportedly in Kabwe, Zambia, at the weekend “engineering” a vote of no-confidence in Kalusha Bwalya and his pro-Blatter Football Association of Zambia executive.

Does Tenga know something that we, suffering Kenyan football fans, players and stake holders, don’t? There’s definitely more to the Kenyan football chaos than meets the eye.

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