NSA Explains Amputee World Cup Snub

The National Sports Authority (NSA) has explained the inability of the nation to support the amputee team to participate in this year's football World Cup in Mexico.

Last week, Ali Jarra, coach of the national amputee football team peddled wild allegation and misinformation; casting insinuation at His Excellency, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and the Minister of Youth and Sports over the inability of the nation to support the amputee team to participate in the Amputee Football World Cup in Mexico.

The PR Unit of the NSA in a release stated “Over the years, the amputee football has been characterized with infighting, disunity and lack of cohesion, resulting in the creation of three different factions each championing the course of amputee football in Ghana.

“One group is led by Rev. Richard Adisah, another group is led by Daniel Nii Mensah and the last faction is led by Mr. Adjetey Sowah.

“In April this year, we managed to bring these various factions together to form an Interim Management Committee (IMC) to manage the amputee football with a clear terms of reference which include, organize a national league to select a national team, to make amputee football visible in the country, draft a workable and acceptable constitution for the association, provide election guidelines, time table and to organize elective congress to elect substantive national executives and prepare the national team adequately to participate in the 2018 Amputee Football World Cup in Mexico.”

The release added “The factionalism and division within the association was so deep that, the office of the Director General of the NSA received a lot of complaints from both stakeholders and the playing body about the entrenched and uncompromising stance taken by the IMC members and the negative effect such attitude is having on them.

“Under such disjointed factionalism, it becomes very difficult for the Ministry to single out one faction to work with since that could be misinterpreted to mean supporting one faction against the others.

“Besides, in such international competitions, the organizers often give financial and technical support to participating teams or countries. The leadership of the IMC failed or refused to disclose the support they received if any, from the organizers.”

The NSA also rubbished threats that Ghana will be banned for 12 years if she failed to participate in the competitions saying the information was totally not accurate, “because we have not sighted any documentation either locally or international to that effect.”

The Amputee Football World Cup is currently not by qualification but by invitation, hence Ghana is being invited to participate in the competition. Furthermore, Ghana never played any qualification match(s) to earn them the right to participate.

It added that the NSA is using this unfortunate circumstance as an opportunity to restructure Ghana Amputee Football by ensuring that the association organizes elective congress to elect their substantive executives by December 2018.