Otniel Hembapu
Windhoek
Perhaps as widely predicted, Namibians will have to wait a bit longer than expected to see activities in the beleaguered Namibia Premier League (NPL) back in full mode after chairman of the NFA ad hoc committee Roger Kambatuku recently made it clear he has ‘no idea’ when the league will start.
In a recent brief interview New Era Sport especially queried Kambatuku about the start of the league and any updates on potential sponsors, but he could not shed much light on where things currently stand.
He candidly said that right now, he and fellow committee members were clueless about when the league would start, because they were still waiting for potential headline sponsor MTC to respond to their presentations and requests.
Kambatuku – who is also an executive member of the NFA – said the ad hoc committee recently engaged the leadership of MTC in two separate meetings.
They went to introduce themselves as the new committee now in charge of NPL affairs, and to outline their plans as well as deliberate on the way forward.
At the meetings, Kambatuku said, they did what was expected of them as a committee in as far as making their presentations and mapping the way forward.
Everything was now squarely in the hands of MTC as only their positive response could get NPL activities up and running again.
They established the NFA ad hoc committee with the aim of replacing the NPL interim committee, which was constitutionally deemed not to have lawful authority to engage sponsors or negotiate on behalf of the league on any aspect.
Therefore, one of the two main functions of the ad hoc committee was to ensure that everything possible would be done to get the league started.
In addition, it had to make sure that the normalisation process of the NPL would be completed, which would then hopefully culminate in the election of a substantive executive committee for the NPL in the shortest period possible.
“To be quite honest with you my brother, as much as I would have liked to provide greater clarity to the public, I seriously have no idea when the league will start because everything is now in the hands of MTC.
“We have already engaged them on two occasions and the Namibia Sport Commission (NSC) also did the same, so all we can now do is just to sit and wait for MTC to come back to us.
“MTC’s response is highly important at this point because it will also open doors for other would-be sponsors to come on board as co-funders,” Kambatuku said.