This financial crunch portends doom for Gor Mahia…..

The truth is that we are struggling. We are really struggling. We have good players but we are losing them because they are receiving better deals that we just cannot match’ these are the words of Gor Mahia Treasurer, Kennedy Ouma (Daily Nation, Wednesday December 10, 2014). Three things emerge here; one, the reigning Kenya Premier League Champions is in a financial crunch. Two, the club is fast losing its stalwarts to other clubs, in search of greener pastures, either locally or abroad. Lastly, the club is unable to lure top notch footballers due to its current financial crunch.

Mercurial talisman and goal poacher, the pint-sized Ugandan, Dan Sserunkuma has already joined Tanzanian giants, Simba SC, dependable defensive rock, David ‘Calabar’ Owino is in the same club for trails, and from all signs, he might be their player before January.  Dependable midfield-chief, Ugandan, Geoffrey ‘Baba’ Kizito has already turned down contract talks due to salary demands, and is headed out, possibly to Vietnam.  Influential winger and one time Kenyan international, Patrick Oboya is also in Vietnam for trials and a deal is almost sure. A closer look at the above players indeed shows that they were in the driving seat as K’Ogallo defended the KPL crown. Losing the league’s top scorer and their most dependable scorer in the last three seasons, defender of the year and one of the finest defenders presently in the country, and then the second best footballer of the year and their best midfielder of the season, is no child’s play. Filling these boots is an uphill task for Gor Mahia and the financial crisis only worsens the problem.

Back in December, last year when shirt sponsors, Tuzo declined their multi-million sponsorship of the team, there was an assumption that getting new sponsors would be no problem. However, one year later, the club got no sponsors and financial crisis have persisted for a while. ‘50100’, is the number that has been embezzled on the clubs official kit, through which well-wishers can financial support it. For a club whose monthly expenditure is as up as, Ksh3m, this cannot meet the huge demand and only sponsors can sufficiently do it. 

The Confederation of African Football (CAF), premier club competition CAF Champions League, is barely two months away. The deadline for signing new players is mid-January. The two are enough to scare lovers of this prestigious Kenyan club. Competing against Africa’s best, the likes of Egypt’s Al Ahly, TP Mazembe of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), et South African big boys, Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns among other elite clubs across the country, melts down to money. Gor Mahia must attract the finest talent locally and across the region in order to match these clubs. The needs top-notch preparations in terms of conditions, allowances and salaries to players, meaningful friendly matches and generally a favorable financial environment in order to perform and not merely make up the numbers in Africa’s most prestigious club competitions.

Sponsors should come in and inject the financial stability in the club as it gets ready for the tough and perilous tourney in the CAF Champions League. According to sources within the club, they have already identified 10 players to join them, but due to the financial part, the process is stuck. Gor Mahia has been unable to hold onto its best players. Sserunkuma, David Owino, Baba Kizito et Patrick Oboya are on the exit path, and sadly, the club has been unable to lure equally impressive talent to replace them. Continental tourney is almost here, yet the club is barely moving towards that due to the financial crunch. Someone come and help, Mighty K’Ogallo, otherwise, it might be drubbed as was the case when they miserably went out to Rwanda’s APR, in the First Round of the 2009 CAF Confederations Cup. They were gored 6-0 on aggregate. Last year, in the CAF Champions League, they went out in the preliminaries to mighty Esperance de Tunis of Tunisia! Money is key to Gor Mahia favorably matching Africa’s finest in next year’s CAF Champions League!

Will sponsors come to mighty Mayienga’s aid and pump in this priceless necessity? If this does not happen, Mighty K’Ogallo is doomed!

                                                 Reach the writer at jeanmutua@yahoo.com

The Nightmare that our Premier League risks plunging into....

When in 2004, Premier league clubs, fed up with the pathetic state of the national football league, joined up to form the Kenya Premier League (KPL), now Tusker Premier League, due to sponsorship from the giant beer manufgacturer, few saw the unprecedented success that this noble idea would churn, a decade plus, later! Before KPL came into existence, courtesy of the 16 founding clubs, under the tutelage of current CEO and former Mathare United, captain, Jack Oguda, the story of the then KFF- league was at best dismal. Clubs could barely pay their players, matches went unplayed due to lack of funds and if they did, some players could spend the night on cold chairs in pubs till morning, simply because of financial constrains! Perhaps, Coast Stars and Shabana Fc epitomized this as they went on to become moribund. Un-honored matches, unpaid players and barely surviving clubs were the norm, due to the financial crunch that most of these clubs faced. Shabana have come back from football oblivion but Coast Stars simply could not stage a comeback.

The gains that KPL managed to bring to Kenyan football can never be down-played. The national league has gone strides, matches are honored and all players get their dues. Sponsors came in to support the league; SuperSport has ploughed in huge sums of money to the clubs, and at season-end, the best performers are rewarded immensely and financially, besides getting the priceless recognition. The league now attracts professional footballers from across the continent! And to cap it all, the league is beamed live to the entire globe and our football talent is showcased to the entire world! Regional Beer manufacturer, East Africa Brewers Limited (EABL), came on board to sponsor the league, on August 21, 2012, to a whopping Ksh 170 million; the most lucrative deal in the history of Kenyan football!! Then on October, 18 2012, global giant sports kitting company, PUMA, signed a Ksh 10million-deal, and became the official ball supplier for the clubs! Rival sporting kit manufacturer, UMBRO, are the official referee kit supplier too. All these giant gains and goodies have been courtesy of the friendly environment that KPL has demonstrated. 

Courtesy of the sobriety and organization that KPL has brought to the local action, sponsors have been lured in and local football is slowly but surely transforming into a lucrative career. Clubs like AFC Leopards, Gor Mahia, Sofapaka et Tusker Fc proudly have shirt sponsors! There is professionalism in the local league and the future is promising!

However, if recent brickbats and feuds from Football Kenya Federation (FKF) are anything to go by, then lovers of local football should be worried. The Sammy Nyamweya-led federation has come up with its demands that threaten local football, and at worst, heightening the possibility of having two parallel leagues, next year. It has demanded that the league be renamed FKF Premier League (FKFPL) and that all committees and judicial bodies operating under KPL to cease being in existence. And maybe the big bone that triggered all this; the dispute on how many teams should play in the league in the 2015 season, with FKF insisting on 18 while KPL standing on the 16 that it have traditionally played since its inception in 2004. Perhaps FKF should know better that finances from the sponsors and professionalism of the league have been key factors in having a 16-team league.

Now, with all due respect to FKF, football fans have a reason of developing cold feet due to these demands. There is trouble and these ugly feuds might undo all the gains that KPL has made down the years. FKF’s motivation for all these must disturb all football lovers who have seen the local league recover from near death in early 2000, to the current achievements that it has achieved. Being the FIFA representatives in the country, the federation has simply been unable to lift Harambee Stars, the national junior teams and Harambee Starlets to the rightful heights of competing against the continent’s best. Preparations for these teams prior to any continental assignments have been mediocre, worthy friendly matches are not put in place for Harambee Stars during the FIFA-recognized international friendlies window, the second-tier Nationwide League has never attracted sponsors who can bank-roll it. In all fairness and fair comments, we all should accept that SuperSport and EABL came in to bank-roll the Premier league due to the sobriety and proper organization that KPL demonstrated something that FKF cannot entirely be commended for with regard to the Nationwide League and the Harambee Stars.

For some of us who followed the local league from the days when clubs could neither honor matches, nor meet their players’ financial needs, we can only ill-afford to jeopardize the sponsors’ financial support, in the form of the brewing fights and politics. From days when the local league was chaotic and organization was almost alien, then we appreciate the unprecedented gains that KPL has made. From the endless politics and administration feuds that describe FKF, it will be sterile imagination to imagine that the premier league would have come this far, under FKF! KPL deserves all credit for the great work that it has done in transforming the Kenyan premier League, and should be given all necessary support to go on with this great work. Did I mention that audited reports from KPL’s expenditure are available to the public to scrutinize? Can the same be said of FKF? I do not think so! Somebody needs to tell FKF that their demands, whose motives and reasons are unknown, are the perfect recipe to ruining our premier league. Players, Clubs and fans should all be worried, unless something stops FKF from executing them! Politics can ruin the sobriety of our rising premier league, just as they have brought Harambee Stars to the lowest ebb ever!

President Kenyatta, Sports Cabinet Secretary, Hassan Wario and his predecessor in that docket, Paul Otuoma, have all called on FKF to re-think and stop this fall-out and disruption to the local league. Something must be done, and correctly so, the curse of fights and politics into our beautiful game, chase away current and potentially future sponsors, and worst of it all, put us on a collision-course with Sepp Blatter and his men, in Zurich, Switzerland!

What about the Scarred Victims………….

‘Free at Last!’ screamed the Saturday Standard and Saturday Nation editions of December 6, 2014. After a six-year battle along the corridors of The International Criminal Court (ICC), in The Hague, Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has withdrawn charges against President Uhuru Kenyatta. The Country’s CEO has been vindicated by the ICC. The investigation and prosecution of this case were simply inept and flawed, as she inherited them from her predecessor, Luis Moreno Ocampo. She has suffered a bloody nose and still at pains to accept it. She now has Deputy President, William Ruto and radio presenter Joshua arap Sang, to pursue to a legally logical end, or fail once more.

The head of State humbly accepted this massive victory, and as a nation, we can breathe a sigh of relief as he can now focus all his energies on improving the welfare of the Kenyan citizenry. Credit goes to the president for morally winning this battle in court, rather than through the cheap politics that most of the usual sycophants in our politics propagated. However, as a nation ululates in joy and the media captures it all, as most of the politicians sycophantically chant victory tunes and the deliberate decibels get louder, a unique cry is slowly but surely being drowned! It is the cry of those who bore the brunt of the 07-08 quagmire. The real victims who were burnt alive inside the Assemblies of God Church in Kiambaa and other places, those who were decapitated, defenestrated, butchered, massacred and smoked out of their homes. They still cry for justice, and those six-feet under now, still need justice. Their tormentors remain free, roaming the country, worse still, confident that they got away with such horrible crimes, and that they can do it again! They are free, with innocent blood on their hands, as their victims live deplorably as refugees in their own country. The victims are still scarred and traumatized, some had their lives permanently changed for worse, and to them, an election is a scarily agonizing experience for them.

As the cases trudged on at The Hague, locally, we took no steps no heal the victims. Political alliances came together under the pretext of uniting the country. But is logically, can there be uniting, when reconciliation has never taken place and the perpetrators have not owned up to their crimes? Perhaps the best example to learn from is our neighbors, Rwanda. When the horrific 1994 genocide where close to a million Rwandans, from both the Hutus and Tutsis were butchered, and ICC set up the Arusha Tribunal to try the big fish responsible, back in the country, the locals set up Gacaca Courts where the smaller fish were brought to book, and the perfect example of reconciliation was experienced, as tormentors and surviving victims came face to face, forgave and embrace each other as a brother and sister. We have refused to learn from Rwanda, and what we have done is simply run away from our past, a past that might come back to haunt us in the future. The wounds and scars have never been healed, victims have cried for elusive justice for a lengthy seven years. Bensouda has failed them and locally, our leaders and judicial system, ahs horribly failed them. They are the forgotten lot, refugees in their mother country, while their perpetrators live freely amongst us.

How bitter does a victim feel, when he or she knows that the person who butchered her family, raped her and burned her hard-earned property, is still free somewhere in the country? The perpetrators of these heinous crimes roam freely as their victims lie six-feet under and the survivors agonize on how their lives were cruelly changed. Communities have never forgiven each other and to best put it, the deceiving façade of uneasy calm has lied to us that all is well. Those who were flushed out of Rift Valley, Kisumu, Central Kenya and other places under the pretext that they were aliens or visitors there, have never gone back, and they are scarred to, considering the fire that almost burned them there. Can we then say that we have healed and forgiven each other? No.

Cheap politics and forgetful memories have misled us on how we ought to have dealt with the ghosts of 07-08. However, we still have a chance to make amends. Kenyans who called each other neighbors regardless of their tribal et ethnic differences should do that once again, our politicians should lead the way and put reconciliation between the affected communities to practice, our judiciary and police should put their feet down and follow up on perpetrators who are still free, and the entire nation should re-think and face this ghost of 07-08, and logically and comprehensively deal with it. We can borrow from what Rwanda did.

Otherwise, this uneasy calm that we pretend to be reconciliation, might one day explode and make us cry. We cannot afford to throw this great country to the dogs once again, No!

                                          Reach the writer at jeanmutua@yahoo.com