By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
A member of the Western Rural Football Association, Kasho Hollande-Cole has said they will be suing the Sierra Leone Football Association in the coming weeks.
Cole who belongs to a faction of the membership known as “Stakeholders” said the suit comes after exhausting all options in the last three months.
No date has been secured for what promises to be a crucial trial for the future of the country’s football.
Hollande-Cole said they will challenge almost every decision that came out of the Kenema congress.
“The process they used to do the nomination of people who were included in the judicial bodies was wrong. The budget process was flawed because there is no finance committee at the SLFA since Isha Johansen took over. Even the process of voting was wrong, because the law states that voting should be done through secret ballot,” Hollande-Cole said.
The decision to sue comes after almost three months of complaints and waiting by Stakeholders. The outcome of the Kenema congress which was held on the 1st of February was contentious with the Executive Committee of the SLFA insisting that the congress was conclusive whiles at least half of its membership questioning almost every process, from registration to the approval of budget.
Hollande-Cole who speaks on behalf of the Stakeholders said they had to wait this long to take the SLFA to court because they wanted to exhaust all possible options.
“We have written a letter to the Sports ministry, we also wrote to the SLFA and even FIFA. We have waited and some of them have not even acknowledged receiving our letter. We had to wait this long so in the future FIFA will not say we didn’t use the internal mechanism to settle this,” Hollande-Cole said.
Politico contacted the SLFA for response. The Head of Media at the FA, Ibrahim Kamara said he had to inform the Executive Committee about the decision and a response will be communicated to Politico.
The response did not come in time for our publication.
On Thursday, the SLFA announced plans to disburse Le 1.5 billion to district football associations, as part of the budgetary support that was “agreed” in the Kenema congress.
In a statement on Thursday, the football said:“ The project funding which was approved at the SLFA Congress in Kenema on the 1st of February, 2020 will facilitate and assist District FAs with projects geared towards football Development in their respective districts.”
The statement also requested “DFA’s (District Football Associations) to submit their respective proposals to the office of the General Secretary with immediate effect.”
Hollande-Cole said the move to call for proposals now shows that the FA hadn’t received any development proposal from DFAs before they took the budget for approval in congress in February.
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