Sports cannot develop in the hands of incompetent leadership

Sounds more like a fairly tale than an actual occurrence in 21 st Century Ghana. A committee set up to investigate circumstances under which athletes to the All Africa Games in Maputo last year were made to go through all manner of hardship, has discovered administrative incompetence on the part of the leadership of the National Sports Authority, and outright corrupt deals underlying sports development in the country.

What is surprising is not that Chief Executive Mr. Walanyo Agra has finally been found to be incapable of leading sports development in this country from the front. That it has taken the  nearly three and a half years, and a committee of , to establish the incompetence of the Chief Executive hoisted on Ghana sports on account of his personal relationship with the Head of State of the Republic of Ghana is what is amusing The Chronicle.

Read the serious indictment of the leadership of sports by the Maputo Committee appointed by Minister of Sports Kofi Humado to investigate circumstances under which Team Ghana was left in the cold, while the state of Ghana had provided enough cash to enable the officials ensure that Ghana's participation in the Maputo Games was without hitches.

'The committee believes that given the extent of management incompetence, institutionalised corruption and organisational rot that is going on at the National Sports Council, it is only a 'roots and branches' shake up of the entire set-up that will rid the organizsation of these ills.'

These are the words of the committee under the Chairmanship of Nii Adotey Din Barima I, a traditional ruler at Dansoman in Accra, and they say a lot about the competence level and corrupt tendencies of the leadership of sports development in Ghana.

On the role of Chief Executive Walanyo Agra, the committee established that 'The Chief Executive Officer, in almost all the contractual and financial transactions, made decisions and expected his subordinates to carry out his instructions without putting these instructions in writing in the form of memos, as is the standard practice in the Public Service.'

The committee has said it all. Walanyo Agra is incapable of leading from the front. The Chronicle learns that the Ministry has written to all those indicted in the report to react to the committee's findings before a white paper is issued on the report, which is itself, a source of amazement.

We would like to believe that before the report is made public, the commissioning authorities would have done these basic background checks, so that by the time the report was released, the white paper would have been ready.

We take this opportunity to caution Mr. Kofi Humado not to pander to the whims and caprices of those who would lobby him to discard the report of the committee. Mr. Agra has not exhibited any tendency to be up and doing.

The Chronicle would like to draw the attention of officialdom to the drama of dollars in the flower pot which offended the sensibilities of many football fans during the infamous Mallam Issah case.

The bottom line is that sports development in this country is not being nurtured according to accepted international practice, and the state should act immediately.