It is all systems go after Football Kenya Federation (FKF) Electoral Board yesterday announced dates for the long awaited county and national elections.

This will be the third time the federation will be conducting its polls, after the previous two exercises that were believed to have cost Sh 35 million, were dismissed by the Sports Disputes Tribunal (SDT) over eligibility issues.

Yesterday, Chair Kentice Tikolo said the board had come up with a solution to tackle the eligibility issue as she unveiled the roadmap for the exercise, where she named September 19 as the date for the repeat County elections and October 17 as the day for national polls.

“We have done a lot of consultations and deliberations during the time that we were missing in action.

I want to put it straight that we are impartial and that we are just following our mandate and terms of reference,” said Tikolo.

She added: “Candidate eligibility has been the bone of contention in these polls, but this time we have come up with a solution that should be acceptable.

Instead of the previous requirement for a candidate to have been active in football for three out of the last four years, we have gone by Fifa’s minimal threshold of two years out of the last five, to sort the eligibility issue once and for all.”

Tikolo said the board had a clear directive from world football governing body Fifa that they use the FKF constitution in conducting the polls and where necessary invoke Fifa statutes.

“We have absolutely no personal interests in the football elections and there is no need for candidates to complicate matters that are straight forward.

We will follow Fifa’s directive, which states that we conduct the elections starting with the County level, to be followed by the national level, then the sub-county polls will come later,” she said.