Confederation of African Football (Caf) secretary general, Veron Mosengo-Omba and his delegation yesterday touched down in Windhoek to attend to the ongoing infighting at the Namibia Football Association (NFA).
Mosengo-Omba’s delegation is also expected to hold closed-door meetings with sports minister Agnes Tjongarero and her team as well as the leadership of the Namibia Sports Commission (NSC).
The NFA media desk yesterday officially confirmed Mosengo-Omba’s working visit to Namibia, saying the visit is primarily centred around the incessant infighting among members of the NFA executive committee and the disputed suspension of the association’s president, Ranga Haikali.
Mosengo-Omba and his delegation, which also includes president of the Angolan Football Federation (AFF) Artur de Almeida, will be in the country until tomorrow.
“He’s here on a working visit on matters related to the current situation within the Namibia Football Association and he has also requested to meet other stakeholders,” said the NFA.
Caf’s intervention has been prompted by the breakdown in relations between NFA secretary general Franco Cosmos and Haikali, who are accusing each other of corruption, maladministration, fraud and gross insubordination.
Haikali has since been suspended by the association’s executive committee, of which the majority supports Cosmos. But about a month ago, Fifa wrote to the NFA executive committee, instructing them to revoke what Fifa termed an “illegal” suspension – a call that the NFA’s executive committee refused to heed.
The association’s executive committee, elected in February 2020, is currently heavily divided, with a section of it supporting Haikali and another backing Cosmos. Not only that, but Cosmos also enjoys support from the rogue Progressive Forces group, which has been accused of capturing the NFA’s secretariat and executive.
Mosengo-Omba was instructed by Fifa in 2019 to set up a normalisation committee for Namibia, on which Cosmos served as the vice chairperson and de facto head of the secretariat. Hilda Basson-Namundjebo served as chairperson of the Fifa-appointed normalisation committee.
The arrival of the normalisation committee at NFA resulted in little success, if any, as it marked the beginning of the fallout between the NFA and the country’s top league, the Namibia Premier League (NPL), which was later hastily replaced with the malfunctioning Namibia Premier Football League (NPFL).
-ohembapu@nepc.com.na