Rex Danquah shoved at LOC

The fractious and splenetic relationship between the Chief Operating Officer of the Local Organizing Committee of Ghana 2008, Magnus Rex Danquah and most members of the Board chaired by Dr. Kofi Amoah has now flowed over into the open.

After a couple of failed attempts to fire the all-powerful Danquah, the Board finally succeeded in massively curtailing his powers and he will now report to a Committee to be instituted by the Board which will be supervised directly by Dr. Kofi Amoah.

According to the Africa Sports newspaper, the "revolution" at the LOC was concluded last Friday after a meeting between the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports and members of the LOC Board. The meeting was chaired by the Minister Professor Dominic Fobih.

Also in attendance were the Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education Ms. Elizabeth Ohene and the Deputy Minister for Education, Science and Sports, Hon. O.B. Amoah.

Dr. Kofi Amoah headed the Board's contingent which also had the "central figure" Mr. Rex Danquah in attendance.

In a telephone interview with Hon. O.B. Amoah, he explained the meeting's agenda was not to victimise anyone but find ways and means of making the LOC's operations more effective.

"There were frank discussions at the meeting"; Hon. O.B. Amoah said.

"What was clear after all the submissions was the fact that there was a big distance between the Board and the Secretariat. To address the imbalance, it was agreed that there should be more control and better supervision from the Board to ensure better efficiency," the deputy minister explained.

Asked to throw more light on the new structure at the LOC, Hon. O.B. Amoah said the Board is expected to meet on Monday to design the new operations at the LOC. But the paper insisted that Mr. Rex Danquah, who wielded considerable power and influence at the Secretariat will have those powers completely snuffed.

He has been effectively shoved and will now report to the new Committee and not his original employers, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports.

The paper said it had been extremely difficult getting Mr. Danquah to react to the new developments as all his mobile phones remained unreachable.

One thing was clear - the Ministry resisted attempts to completely fire Mr. Danquah since in its candid view, it would have sent wrong signals to the rest of the continent as the competition gets even closer.