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20.04.2007 Football News

FA Mafia To Be Broken

20.04.2007 LISTEN
By Daily Graphic

What began as a normal case of protest between Division One combatants, Bolgatanga Catholic Stars and Wa All Stars, promises to be a sensational trial in "ways and means", the notorious tag by which dubious football activities are branded in Ghana.

By press time yesterday, as things got steamy at the Catholic-All Stars hearing, the mood outside the newly-secured stronghold of the Ghana Football Association was a fiery display of relationships gone bad.

Self-confessed operatives of the game's domestic Mafia with deep insight into its underworld dealings are up in arms and determined to expose one of the ugliest methods by which cases are lost and won at the GFA.

Coincidentally, it is that method, the criminal scheme of removing vital documents needed to adjudicate on disciplinary matters, that has fouled the relationship between two former colleagues and turned friends into foes.

In Ghana's recent football history, missing documents have become the ploy to cripple the dispensation of justice particularly at the lower levels of the league.

Last year when Kintampo United took their division one case against Brong Ahafo United to the Appeals Committee, the Appeals Committee failed to hear their case because the vital documentary evidence lodged with the GFA could not be found.

Enraged by the development, a Kintampo native and businessman, Asoma Banda, headed for the high court but to no avail. He was ruled to have no locus to sue on behalf of Kintampo United.

In the other high profile case last year, Numo United filed a disciplinary case against FA President Kwesi Nyantakyi's Wa United but the case was thrown out because files of Wa United, needed to ascertain how the affected players were registered could not be found.

With Ghana football already scandalized by outrageous middle league scores, the hand of demon struck again, this time robbing Catholic Stars of the documents needed to make their case against the President's team now renamed Wa All Stars.

The latest affair also saw a remarkable spill of bad blood between FA President Kwesi Nyantakyi and the man who defended his club in the case brought against them by Numo Stars.

Kofi Manu, an electrical engineer and football consultant, has defended many clubs in disciplinary matters including the president's own club.

A fiery advocate for his own concept of justice, he has drawn all his daggers against the FA chairman for fingering him in the raging saga of stolen documents from the FA Secretariat.

Indeed Kofi Manu is the main character among three men so far charged with "unlawful entry and stealing."

The others are Nana Oduro Safo and Oloboi Commodore.

But around these three has formed a formidable coalition of forces determined to get to the bottom of this phenomenon of missing documents.

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