Inept officials hazardous for our sports
What you need to know:
- Why is it so hard for Kenyan sports officials to be honest? Because this is the real problem.
- Kenya’s failures with the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations means that this is our second time messing up with the hosting rights of continental competitions, and there is no telling how our long-term relationship with the Confederation of African Football (Caf) will look like.
- We do not have to accept incompetent administrators in sports who toy around with the livelihoods of millions of Kenyans and the futures of our children without taking responsibility.
Why is it so hard for Kenyan sports officials to be honest? Because this is the real problem.
Kenya’s failures with the 1996 Africa Cup of Nations means that this is our second time messing up with the hosting rights of continental competitions, and there is no telling how our long-term relationship with the Confederation of African Football (Caf) will look like.
Rwanda, a small nation with a far smaller GDP than Kenya, easily hosted Chan last year to send a message that political good will and administrative discipline makes hosting such tournaments possible. Not endless bickering.
We bid for a tournament and were officially handed the mandate in 2014, thereby setting a four-year time bomb ticking, without a plan. Three years later, we still don’t have a plan.
We put Chan preps on ice for two years, squandered Sh2 billion for sports ministry officials to travel around the continent for benchmarking, only to end up red faced and disgraced. A country with no ability to build sports infrastructure.
Looking at the events that precipitated Kenya’s loss, one sees that the administration is really, really good at lying. It is a swirling mixture of baffling, confusing and hopelessly complex recklessness when a sports official says on national television that Kenya, has enough hospitality infrastructure to host a football competition, but no stadiums to play on.
Sports Cabinet Secretary Hassan Wario is yet to appear in public regarding this shameful development. If you or I had committed even one-tenth of the mess Wario’s ministry has committed in their four year tenure, we’d definitely be jobless, and perhaps watching the sun rise through a set of bars.
If the current crop of sports leaders remain in office, expect a continuing level of dishonesty unmatched by any other administration.
But we do not have to accept the falsehood that we are capable of producing world class footballers but incapable of qualifying for major tournaments.
We do not have to accept tournaments handed down to us as gifts to pacify us for our government’s failures, which is what Mwendwa is peddling by saying that Caf will rally behind Kenya to get hosting rights for U20 and U17 World Cups.
We do not have to accept incompetent administrators in sports who toy around with the livelihoods of millions of Kenyans and the futures of our children without taking responsibility. Things can, and should change.
