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I grew up in Suna East with a fairly interesting childhood that revolved around going to school and playing football over the weekend. Saturdays and Sundays were for church at St John’s Anglican, not far from the famous Posta grounds that my MP Junet Mohamed says ni ngome ya Baba.

This church was our football practice ground as kids and we horned our skills under the watchful eyes of parents or older siblings who were always around church. As we grew older, most of us outgrew the church compound for our mickey mouse football and the transition to the Migori Stadium, 50 metres from the church, for a big field was seamless.

But at the stadium there was the pleasant distraction of watching Migori United  play against the likes of Kisumu All Stars, Kisumu Hot Stars, Chemilil Sugar FC, Muhoroni FC in the then division under the Super League, which was then the top tier.

You see, I am talking about this because I started following football as a young boy. It followed the leadership of football from the days of Sammy Obingo, Job Omino, Peter Kenneth, Maina Kariuki and president emeritus Sam Nyamweya and the recent ascendance of Nick Mwendwa to the helm of football administration as president.

I have followed football and Harambee Stars since the days of Reinhard Fabisch and the glory days of Sammy Shollei and the Fabisch generation of Eric Ochieng and John Odhiambo that gave us the dreams. You see, Fabisch had this entertaining brand of football with a critical core of young players marshalled by Musa Otieno. He came in and disbanded the Sammy Shollei-captained team and built a very vibrant one that was not only exciting but very functional.

He had in his national team side two players that I had watched playing league football against my home town club Migori United. Tillen Oguta and Tom Ogweno were a joy to watch. Seeing players I had watched play for Mbita Juakali against Mohamed “Amedu” Kassim’s Migori United was refreshing.

I remember Tillen used to come in as a second-half substitute, to great effect. He was stylish and very effective and as they used to say, Fabisch’s substitutions used to make impacts almost immediately. He went for talented footballers from wherever he could find talent and we do remember the likes of Frankline Obare from Meru’s Mafuko Bombers. 

We loved Fabisch and he became the man of the moment and at some point, in 1997, there was the catchphrase “Fabisch for president” with some light touch. But Fabisch was also a maverick. Having disbanded the national team he found, he recalled Vincent Kwarula, and Kenyans were not only happy with Kwarula’s recall but kinda asked for a few more established and experienced players to be recalled. He didn’t listen.

Recently, as I was running the Football Kenya Federation 2024 electoral board, I had the chance of meeting and making friends with most former Harambee Stars footballers, and as a big fan of Sammy Shollei, every time we had a conversation, I kept telling him I remember fondly the golden days he marshalled the national team midfield.

Then there was the Jacob Ghost Mulee era and the players who took us to the 2004 AFCON led by Dennis Oliech. We have had glory days and even recently we had the Nick and Barry team take us to the AFCON and for the very first time seen a Kenyan national team at the World Cup as our under-17 Starlets made Kenyans proud in the Dominican Republic.

On Saturday, football delegates elected Hussein Mohammed and MacDonald Mariga as the president and vice president of FKF.  As a board, we came thus far because of the good working relationship we had with candidates and different stakeholders. We did our job with integrity, which was important to us as a process just like the the victory of victors was to the winners. Hussein and Mariga to the world.

— The writer is a PhD student in Political Communication