OJUANG: Authorities must stamp out match-fixing immediately!

What you need to know:

  • The past week saw Kakamega Homeboyz sack head coach Paul Nkata over allegations that he had been fixing matches.
  • We have seen coaches sacked and hired in Kenya for the least of trifles, but never before has a veteran coach been sacked for this crime of match fixing!
  • This rot must be very carefully investigated and the guilty should not be allowed even to watch football on TV if possible!

Meyer Wolfsheim? No, he’s a gambler.” Gatsby hesitated, then added coolly: “He’s the man who fixed the World Series back in 1919.”

The quote is lifted from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, The Great Gatsby.

Gatsby had taken Nick for lunch with selfish motives over a girl called Daisy and he introduces his friend Meyer Wolfsheim who fixed the 1919 baseball season!

Here was one man doing all that so as to make a pile, and he did.

In the end, too many people were involved and suspicions began to arise. Word got out and the players were taken to court.

The charges against them were dropped but they were still banned for life with their reputations totally sullied! Fitzgerald’s character is fictional but the events were real.

Sometime back in 2014, a Kenyan veteran referee was quoted on TV saying that he had been approached severally by some people to alter the results of matches.

He was quick to make himself a saint by asserting that he had “rebuffed” all the offers and was thus as clean as can be.
“We normally fear the worst when any of our matches is not live on TV (SuperSport). Teams are openly favoured in the Kenyan Premier League. Our protests all through have since fallen on deaf years,” a player who spoke on condition his identity won’t be revealed for fear of reprisal claimed to Nation journalist David Kwalimwa at that time.

Of course, the Kenya Premier League also admitted that they had received complaints of match fixing but for lack of concrete evidence could not act on them.

The past week saw Kakamega Homeboyz sack head coach Paul Nkata over allegations that he had been fixing matches. According to Homeboyz chairman Cleophas Shimanyula, investigations will continue on seven players alleged to be involved. That number is very scary for a team. It simply means that Shimanyula will just have to disband the whole team if all he says is proven right.

The crime is very grave and mr Shimanyula continued: “We’ve already reported to the police with recorded evidence and written to the federation over the same. He has been using one of the players, George Mandela, to influence the other six with a figure between Sh50,000 to Sh200,000 per game,”
It is on that score that we feel pity for those players.

For some 200,000 shillings or the lower amount, they were ready to throw away their careers!

Did they even know the consequences of their act? Are there other players out there that have been doing the same? Are they still doing it? Are there any others contemplating the same?
We have seen coaches sacked and hired in Kenya for the least of trifles, but never before has a veteran coach been sacked for this crime of match fixing!

It is on this score that we urge the football authorities to act with iron fists to crush sans mercy on anybody found to be culpable.

Send a strong message to any toddler that may be harbouring such shameful ideas.

This rot must be very carefully investigated and the guilty should not be allowed even to watch football on TV if possible!