With the recent stepping down of Isha Johansen in the race for President of Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA); leaving the contest open to two candidates Sadick Deen-Nyarkoh and Thomas Daddy Brima, football fans are urging President Julius Maada Bio and his Government in general to leave the SLFA alone to manage its own affairs.
It is no secret that it was due to regular and deliberate government interference into the affairs of the SLFA that led to the awful state in which the outgoing FA President, Isha Johansen found herself mired in all sorts of internal squabbles, infighting, corruption, maladministration, match-fixing allegations, treachery and other ills which plagued her SLFA administration and made it a laughing stock of its compatriots elsewhere in the world.
Football fans are of the view that with the stepping down of Isha Johansen along with Rodney Michael and others for the position of SLFA President, this is the time for President Bio and his government to support the SLFA and football in general financially, morally and in other ways and not by interfering into how the SLFA manages its administrative affairs beginning with the election of its executives and also not interfering into the general running of the SLFA affairs regarding football management in the country.
It is also no secret that the Isha Johansen-led SLFA Executive was fraught with myriad of problems because of political interference beginning with Paul Kamara – one-time Minister of Sports up to recent dispensations.
It is now time for government functionaries to hands-off football management in this country otherwise, the SLFA will still be unable to properly manage football in the country like how it is done elsewhere on the continent and across the globe.
With the likes of Daddy Brima, if he emerges SLFA President and with no interference from the government, football will certainly reach the highest pinnacle because he is highly experienced in football management and with his contacts, the new SLFA Executive that will come into office stands the chance of lifting football in Sierra Leone to a height it has never reached before.
It is against this background and with few days to the SLFA Elective Congress that football fans are calling on President Bio and members of his government not to have anything to do with this Congress otherwise, nothing would have been achieved. They (President Bio and his ilk) would only have restarted what initially caused the plague which ate into the fabric of the Isha Johansen-led SLFA Executive rendering it ineffective and incapable of managing football affairs throughout her tenure.
Football fans are determined to discourage such from reoccurring because it is taking the country nowhere.
Credit: Prime Times
