Barry Silah @obel_barry

A crisis is looming in Kenyan football after a group of former sport administrators threatened to organise their own parallel elections to counter the long overdue Football Kenya Federation (FKF) polls.

 In a bare-knuckles press conference yesterday held at the Panari Hotel in Nairobi, the team led by former FKF president Sam Nyamweya, former long-serving Cecafa secretary-general Nicholas Musonye and former FKF national treasurer Twaha Mbarak, the group took issue with the FKF elections board, accusing it of sanitising a flawed process under duress.

 The group labelled the nomination exercise held on Monday at Kandanda House a cosmetic process overseen by a compromised lot.

 “We have options on the table because we want a credible exercise. If nothing is rectified, we will organise our own elections, appoint an  interim committee and then register ourselves.

We have too huge a following to be ignored. This group has the ability to do things the right way and so we will not be intimidated and neither shall we engage in the so-called elections being arranged by the electoral board,” said Nyamweya who demanded that Kentice Tikolo and her team should resign.

 The board has cleared five presidential candidates for the October 17 national polls but the Nyamweya group has called the four contestants lining up against incumbent Nick Mwendwa as stooges who have been bought.

 “Some of these guys were broke until three weeks ago and suddenly they have Sh600,000 to pay as a nomination fee.

Makes you wonder how suddenly they got cash and so we are saying the sitting president whose term has expired is obviously the guilty party.

Those other candidates are projects of the federation. Some have been promised jobs at FKF so therefore all this is well-choreographed.

We are clear that something dirty is going on and we will not be party to it,” stated Musonye who also implored the government and Ministry of Sports to intervene.

 Twaha Mbarak dismissed the nomination process as flawed and programmed to paint the incumbent president as a democrat. 

He warned that if nothing is resolved in due course, Kenyan football would go back to its knees.  

“We do not want a situation whereby we are going back to the early 2000s where we had two factions managing football in this country. All we are asking for is respect for the rule of law.

 “The elections board has clearly gone against the recommendations of the Sports Disputes Tribunal of March 17 and this is why there is so much confusion.

This team here has supporters from at least 30 counties so locking out over 5,000 clubs is unacceptable.

We are saying that Fifa must also respect the laws of the land otherwise we can as well go back to Court of Arbitration of Sports like before.

Football must be run in a proper manner and this idea that an individual wants to micromanage the game is out of order” he said.

 Nairobi NEC aspirant Simon Mugo called on the government “to act fast and salvage a crisis that is likely to tear apart football.” 

 “This is a serious issue that cannot be overlooked as we are likely to witness anarchy,” stated Mugo who also advised Sports CS to call an urgent stakeholder meeting onthe matter.

 Kenya is now staring at the likelihood of a ban like it happened in 2002 with all caution thrown out of the window but Nyamweya has warned that no elections will take place unless the conditions of the Sports Act are met.