Olukayode Thomas, Bisong Etahoben, Dumisani Ndlela, Eric Mwamba, Ken Opala, Phathisani Moyo & Charles Rukuni
AFRICA’S dismal performance at the 2010 World Cup — with the exception of Ghana — should be no surprise.
A FAIR investigation into soccer management in eight African countries — Camer-oon, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe, found that while players have sacrificed their personal fortunes to develop, not just soccer, but their own communities and have, in some cases, bailed out their national teams, the administrators tasked with developing the game focus on personal gain.
In Cameroon, traditionally Africa’s foremost soccer country, and the home of Confederation of African Football (CAF) president, Issa Hayatou, soccer stadiums are empty.
“How do you want people to attend matches when their favourite players are not on the field?” asks Prince Ndoki Mukete, former assistant secretary-general of the Came-roonian football association (FECAFOOT).
The reasons for the absence of both supporters and the most famous players from the Cameroonian stadiums is simple, adds Mukete, “It’s transfers. Our soccer officials quickly sign deals for player transfers as soon as a player shows promise. Trans-fers bring in money.”
The effect of the focus on transfers is that every good player knows that his value is to the outside world and not to the national soccer team.
Samuel Eto’o, one of the best known players from Cameroon, and currently the most decorated African player, is only 29, but he has been in international soccer since he was 16, playing for top clubs like Real Madrid, Mallorca, Barcelona and Int-ernazionale. Other top players in Cameroon have similar histories. They often don’t perform well on the rare occasions that they are playing nationally, since getting hurt or exhausted will diminish their international value.
Mukete regrets the situation, which he says, has gotten out of hand recently: “We need to retain some value here. Soccer cannot develop when the stadiums are empty.”
Soccer development does not seem high on the agenda of the present FECAFOOT, which is a virtual top 10 of real estate owners, sports goods manufacturers’ agents, lawyers (who organise player transfers), transport and hotel contractors, and public relations agents. At any FECAFOOT meeting in Cameroon, businesspeople reportedly fight to get access to the rich spoils that have turned at least nine of the federations’ officials extremely wealthy.
Beefing up payment for FECAFOOT services is a common scourge, with a prime example, cited in pending court papers against four FECAFOOT officials in Cameroon, being a bill for an air-conditioned Prado for the Malawi team at the occasion of the African Cup of Nations in January 2010, when the actual vehicle offered to the Malawians was a dilapidated Toyota.
The court documents, which were obtained by FAIR, show that FECAFOOT vice-president, David May-ebi, receives regular payments from sports materials manufacturer, Puma, into his personal bank account, without reflecting the amounts in FECAFOOT records.
Co-bidder for the same sponsorship, Adidas, that did not offer a bribe, lost out. Other FECAFOOT documents seen by FAIR are player transfer contracts in which birth dates of players are altered to make them more easily marketable. Club origins of players are altered sometimes as well, so that the purported owners of the clubs can cash in on transfer fees. Some players sold off in this way have not made it in international soccer and live in poor conditions in countries such as Indonesia, China and Mexico.
A recent state audit, likely prom-pted by revelations made by a government delegate to FECAFO-OT, Jean Lambert Nang, has recommended the prosecution of the four FECAFOOT officials charged in the court papers.
However, observers do not expect these prosecutions to take off. Said one such observer: “They can’t do that, bec-ause everybody is in on it.”
Within all this, Cameroon’s players seem to be forgotten. When ne-ws reports said they had compla-ined about “poor payment” in the run-up to the Wor-ld Cup, soccer officials stated in resp-onse that the players were not “patr-iotic” enough.
Cameroon was knocked out in the first round after losing all its three games against the Netherlands, Den-mark and Japan.
Being “unpatriotic” was also one of the epithets directed at a me-mber of the FAIR team in Came-roon, when he attempted to inve-stigate the sources of Hayatou’s wea-lth. The reporter was threatened, beaten and has been in hiding since the incident earlier this year.
Partying in Cote d’Ivoire
Cote d’Ivoire — a country of extremely poor coffee and cocoa farmers — spends millions of US dollars on its soccer managers, with very little national performance in return. The coffee and cocoa industry is one of the soccer federation, Federation Ivoiri-enne de Football (FIF)’s principal sponsors, jostling for prime position with mobile telephone operator, Orange Cote d’Ivoire. Other major sponsors are the National Petroleum Operations Com-pany (PETROCI) and the Petroleum Stocks Manag-ement Company (GESTOCI).
Estimates of the amounts that are contributed by these major sponsors are not made public, but sources say they could be as high as US$40 million per year.
Sadly, Cote d’Ivoire has received very little national soccer performance in return. Though equipped with such great international stars as Didier Drogba, the team lacks cohesion and is mostly, like Cameroon, concerned about individual players’ performances outside their country. At the World Cup, Cote d’Ivoire was knocked out in the first round.
Soccer officials and local government allies in this country, meanwhile, make money out of fraudulent ticket sales and building contracts that seldom materialise into the actual buildings as intended.
Abidjan stadium dates from 1945 and only has 35 000 seats. This is so small that, when extra tickets for non-existent seats were fraudulently sold at the World Cup qualifying match against Malawi in 2009, a stampede killed 20 people and injured another 135.
FIF has reported this particular incident as “an unfortunate experience” and refers to “funds allocated to the presidents of the clubs of Anyama, Korhogo and to the mayor of Bouaflé” for the refurbishment of their stadiums, which was apparently never carried out.
A number of low-level officials were fined for the fraudulent ticket sales leading up to the Abidjan stampede, but local award-winning journalist, André Silver Konan, who investigated the matter, has gone on record to say that only small fry got punished and that “big fish” were left alone.
(To be continued next week)
- FAIR investigative team: Olukayode Thomas, Biso-ng Etahoben, Dumisani Ndlela, Eric Mwamba, Ken Opala, Phathisani Moyo & Charles Rukuni.
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