The Cabinet Secretary for Sports Culture and Heritage Amb. Amina Mohamed has responded to the decision of the World football governing body, FIFA, to suspend Kenya from international football due to government interference.In a statement from the ministry on Saturday, Amina revealed that the government tried to engage FIFA but the football body was reluctant to do so even when they meant good.Further, the ministry called out FIFA’s perspective of the government and football stakeholders, noting that the body considers them a nuisance, adding that the ministry was expecting the global body to notice the positive things that the FKF Caretaker Committee has done since assuming office in November.FIFA President Gianni Infantino has confirmed the suspension of Kenya from international football due to Government interference. Full story coming shortly on @MozzartSportKe pic.twitter.com/RXTpfILKmy— Jeff Kinyanjui (@Nyash88) February 24, 2022 FIFA’s decision to suspend Kenya has already claimed a casualty following the disqualification of the Women’s U17 side on Friday from the FIFA U-17 Women’s World Cup first round of qualifiers that was set to take place in March.The Cabinet Secretary expressed her hope in CAF to rescind their decision disqualifying Harambee Starlets from AWCON qualifiers and added that they will continue to engage FIFA on the ongoing cases and investigations, hoping that FIFA would do the same.Excerpt from the ministry’s press releaseApparently, FIFA does not relate to governments and stakeholders. It considers them a nuisance. FIFA however, still expects the same governments and stakeholders to fund football with no transparency and/or accountability in total disregard for national laws, institutions, values and practices.The government tried unsuccessfully to communicate with FIFA even with respect to resources that FIFA and CAF quietly gives federations and which we suspected were not used as intended to no avail. It is now even suspected that in some cases there was double payment. We paid for activities and services that had already been paid for by CAF.FIFA, in fact, in our case and many others, showed so much reluctance to engage with government, for good order, for universal principles of accountability and transparency that we were left with no choice than to allow it to manage football as we complied with our laws and demanded accountability for monies entrusted to the Federation for use on our youth. We hope that CAF will reconsider its decision on our Harambee Starlets who had fully prepared for the AWCON Qualifiers by listening to voices of those who have mismanaged football.The Caretaker Committee that I legally established and that is fully recognized by our laws, has been hard at work. They have organized matches between our team and Uganda, Rwanda and Egypt and paid allowances on time, and leveled the playing field between male and female referees and players. It needs to be celebrated.We expected FIFA to take notice of all the positive developments taking place, allow us to carry on with our legally prescribed mandate to put our own house in order and then work with us on normalization and fresh elections. We instead learnt through the media of a suspension based on government interference.We will continue cleaning up, putting systems of accountability in place as well as a draft constitution that is fully aligned to the Constitution of Kenya 2010, the FIFA statute and to good order and globally recognized values.We intend at the same time to engage FIFA as we have continued doing over the last three and a half months. We intend to keep it informed as we have done until now on the going cases, investigations and the actions that we are taking. We hope FIFA will reciprocate and keep Kenyans informed on actions they intend to take with respect to issues we have raised on suspected misappropriation of their resources.
