THE WORLD football governing body, FIFA has reportedly withdrawn its suspension notice against the Ghana Football Association (GFA)
FIFA had threatened to suspend the GFA from its activities following the Government of Ghana attempts to dissolve the country’s football association after an expose’ by ace investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas revealed corruption among former top officials of GFA.
Minister of Information, Kwame Oppong Nkrumah who said this to the media yesterday in Accra said “On August 27, we received a letter from FIFA subsequent to our engagements with them.”
According to him, “That letter essentially serves about four things. I will paraphrase part of that letter and put them together.”
He stated that “First, that FIFA has withdrawn the notice that it served that it could suspend the GFA from its activities. Second: that the bureau of the FIFA Council has on August 27, decided to appoint the Normalization Committee for the Ghana Football Association.”
“The mandate of the Committee has also been spelled out in accordance with Article 8, Paragraph 2 of the FIFA Statutes,” the Minister noted, adding that “If I may just read you the three major pillars of the mandate: One is to run GFA’s daily affairs incorporate with the taskforce once it has been set up by FIFA, CAF and the Government of Ghana.”
Continuing, he said “Two, to review GFA’s statute to ensure compliance with the requirement of FIFA and CAF particularly Article 15 of the FIFA statute, and three, once the GFA statute meets the requirement of FIFA and CAF, this Normalization Committee will organize and conduct elections of the GFA Executive Committee on the basis of the revised GFA statutes
The letter, he said, was signed by the Secretary-General of FIFA, Fatima Samura, and that in the coming days, a delegation from FIFA and CAF is expected in Ghana to examine the suitability of the names proposed by the Government of Ghana for that Normalization Committee.
Mr. Oppong Nkrumah explained that “it is our expectation that this will pave the way for the reorganization of Ghana’s Football moving forward.”
Meanwhile, he disclosed that per the letter from FIFA, all the football reforms exercise is expected to end by March 2019.
BY Melvin Tarlue