WINDHOEK – The Namibia Football Association (NFA) with the assistance of FIFA, the world football governing body, successfully completed three days of intensive work to review its constitution at a workshop in the capital.
A NFA constitutional review meeting was held at the Safari Hotel in Windhoek for the past three days and according to the NFA President John Muinjo, the review was in accordance with the expectations from FIFA that all member associations’ constitutions be aligned to the FIFA statutes and standards.
The NFA president chaired the Constitutional Review Committee meetings, whose participants consisted of 19 members drawn from the whole Namibian football spectrum.
“As an association, and on recommendations by FIFA, we had to convene this meeting to strengthen our constitution, a process we felt was long overdue. We will now engage in a proactive process to consult the family of football across the length and breadth of the country on the proposed changes to the constitution, after which they will be tabled at the NFA congress for consideration and possible adoption. We are done and happy with the first stage of the process and we are now ready to move on,” Muinjo said.
The FIFA delegation was headed by James Johnson, manager within the FIFA Member Association (MA) Department, accompanied by his colleague Alexander Gros, Salome Stahli from the FIFA Legal Department and FIFA Regional Development Officer, the Botswana-based Ashford Mamelodi.
According to Mamelodi, the NFA has come a long way and keeps on growing and this latest exercise was testimony to the NFA’s commitment to progress.
“As FIFA we are very satisfied with the review process that was carried out by the NFA. It went very well and we believe that through this review the NFA will become even stronger and create a very competent administration, thereby taking the game forward with great purpose and intent,” said Mamelodi.
Mamelodi said the main objective of the review was to incorporate various processes of FIFA into the NFA constitution as well as the resolutions of the FIFA congress, which was held in Mauritius last year.
NFA Secretary General Barry Rukoro explained that the way forward would be for the NFA executive to map the way for a consultative meeting to be organized later in the year to share the recommended changes with the whole football family, after which final recommendations are expected to be adopted by the NFA congress by November 2014.
“As a football association, we have to remain progressive and adopt various value-addition ways of doing things and by aligning our constitution to the FIFA standards and statutes, I believe we can never go wrong and an only consolidate our efforts of taking the game to the people and protecting the beautiful game at all times,” Rukoro said.
By Staff Reporter