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22.03.2005 Football News

I Won't Resign -Nyaho-Tamakloe

By Graphic
I Won't Resign -Nyaho-Tamakloe
22.03.2005 LISTEN

A gentlemanly scheme couched behind the scenes to talk embattled FA chairman, Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe, out of office has bounced off a rock.
And the fierce tension generated in the aftermath of that Friday meeting has elevated the present Nyaho-Executive Council tussle to a political standoff between the FA chairman and the Sports Minister Osafo Maafo.
Immediately preceding the rancorous encounter between the Minister and the encounter between the Minister and the FA boss, at a meeting also attended by Deputy Minister Osei Bonsu Amoah, was a threat by the Ghana League Clubs Association (GHALCA) to make Ghana football ungovernable for as long as Nyaho remains chairman.
Ghalca's load of threats included one that the clubs would withdraw the 12.5 percent of gate proceeds paid to the FA, and also the FA's share of 10 per cent on foreign transfer fees.
The clubs are also threatening that for as long as Nyaho remains in office, no Ghanaian club would release any of their players to honour any international assignment.
A congress of the Ghanaian football chieftains has been scheduled for Accra on Friday March 30, 2005, to get statutory backing for the clubs' latest position.
The protracted legal tussle between the FA chairman and the Executive Council played a remote role but the immediacy of Friday's meeting was the alarming effect the clubs' threat had on the minister. And he summoned the group in the hope of aborting the danger by talking Nyaho into resigning.
Predictably, Osafo-Maafo's effort rather stirred the fight in the combative man.
The minister was later to explain that he only meant to avoid what the Congress of Ghana football hoped to achieve when, by a vote of 72-2, they passed an overwhelming vote of no confidence in the chairmanship of Dr. Nyaho-Tamakloe.
"When the people with whom you are to work say they do not have confidence in you, you lack the cooperation with which to achieve results," he told a radio station in Accra.
In fury, an agitated Nyaho also reacted, saying, if that was the reason for the minister's intervention, "it could constitute a dangerous precedent in Ghana football and entrench the practice where a chairman who disagrees with Ghalca would have to go."
"I totally disagree with this and I will fight on to the logical end," he said.
Part of Nyaho's anger was directed at Mr O.B. Amoah who, until his nomination as deputy to Mr Osafo-Maafo, was a member of the football Executive Council, with which the chairman is currently embroiled in a raging legal battle.
On the impasse and threats from the clubs, the chairman said it is absurd for the clubs to claim for themselves the right to prevent their players from responding to national duty.
He said not even foreign professional clubs have that right, and that FIFA has a solution for clubs who dare prevent players from honouring legitimate national calls.
"If it comes to that, I think FIFA would solve it for us." There had been rumours about a possible FIFA clampdown on Ghana following the legal impasse, but they have remained just that---rumours.
There have been no grounds for any such FIFA action because the history of football itself, both ancient and current, records many instances where matters of football have been dealt with in courts of law.
The Bosman Ruling, the fundamental law governing the movement of players in the European Union, is the product of a legal suit initiated by the Belgian player And in 2002, FIFA President Sepp Blatter, himself sought refuge in a Swiss Court, when a group of FIFA executives led by the Somali Fara Ado, tainted his name with corruption in the name of football.
The latest twist in the Nyaho Affair, however, has raised real concerns about the imminence of a FIFA clamp down as examples from Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria stare Ghana in the face.


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