On the Road With the Queen of Sierra Leone Football
The queen of Sierra Leone Football has just returned from a trip to Europe. She is no stranger to the place and we cannot even begin to count the air miles she's clocked recently. Well she'd been flying in and out of Sierra Leone long before she took power at the Football Association. But it's fair to say she's done a bit more travelling since she became queen than would normally have been the case. Again, that's probably part of her job.
On this last trip, she gave an intriguing interview to The Guardian newspaper in London – a highly respected left-leaning paper which we make it a habit to read daily, online. So that was a huge coup for the queen. The journalist used her interview to produce a fantastic feature that covered several aspects of the queen's life. Not once did she tell The Guardian she was impeached just before she left for Europe.
A local radio has reported many times that the queen told sports journalists in Sierra Leone that she didn't “need the local media to become great". Assuming that to be correct, we now understand where she was coming from. In Sierra Leone she speaks to only one radio station which plays softball with her all the time. She also has her favourite newspaper. And that's all. True to her word, the queen doesn't “need the local media to become great".
So we now quote extensively from that Guardian article titled, Sierra Leoene's Isha Johansen blazes trail amid tragedy and infighting by Anna Kessel. Note our comments please.
The Guardian ... FC Johansen grew and became a Premier League club. Some of their players have gone on to have trials at European clubs...“People said I would come up against a lot of problems: ‘A woman? In Africa? That’s going to be something.’ But I was used to it, that was the least of my problems, what men would think. So I threw my hat in barely two weeks before the elections.
TWITTER - Actually, FC Johansen didn't quite grow into the premier league in Sierra Leone as this line suggests. Johansen landed in the premier league from a parachute. They are not the only ones to have done that in Sierra Leone recently but here's what happened: they bought over a failing team called Golf Leopards and swiftly christened it FC Johansen. They did not play and qualify like QPR did for example in the English premier league. That was pretty smart, right?
Is the queen saying she jumped into the last race just two weeks before the elections? We are not sure because we knew she had gone back on her unqualified support for Rodney Michael about a month before she finally came out of the shadows.
And this woman thing is being disingenuously and vastly overplayed. A combination of ruthless politics and administrative manipulations cleared the way for her to take power at the SLFA. FIFA endorsed that. Three candidates, any of whom could have trounced her at the polls, were controversially disqualified under the noses of FIFA, with the Inspector General of Police in Sierra Leone of all people providing security for 47 fake delegates. Just outside the IG's office there's a barricade with armed police guarding against Al-Shabbab - a really busy man. Hahahahahahaha!
The Guardian - ... The event left a bitter taste in the mouths of her rivals that still lingers. “There was a lot of animosity,” Johansen says, shaking her head sadly. “They called themselves ‘the aggrieved party’. They wanted a stake in the football. I said: ‘OK, fine, let’s work together’. We tried to bury the hatchet. But it didn’t work.”
TWITTER - Well, it's easy to know why it didn't work out. Those moves were never genuine. The queen wanted to create the impression in the public, particularly among football fans, that she was trying to mend the cracks opened up by the means by which she had taken power. A kind of winner-takes-all mentality is running through all her appointments at the SLFA – consultants, welfare officers and so on are all from FC Johansen. She worked closely with the ministry of sport to bring career – ending bogus match-fixing allegations against powerful national team footballers and her main opponents in that election that never was. Is that the way to make peace?
THE GUARDIAN - At a local game, Johansen says an argument broke out between Kallon and a rival club owner. The exchange escalated and she worried that, with their groups of supporters looking on, there could be a riot. Johansen called the police. They did not come. In the end she entreated Kallon, a long-time friend, to call off his supporters and leave the stadium. He refused. As she turned to leave he grabbed her arm. She says she instinctively hit out in self-defence. The two have since made up but the infighting within domestic football continues.
TWITTER - OK, here's this line again ...'As she turned to leave he grabbed her arm. She says she instinctively hit out in self-defence'. Why did Kallon grab her hand? Let's say Twitter is having a quarrel with somebody next door and the queen decided to be a peacemaker but we refuse to let her into the affair, why would we then hold her back if she tried to leave the scene? Something is missing. So when you hold somebody's hand to prevent her getting into your situation, you should end up with a black eye in the name of 'self-defence'.
What she didn't tell The Guardian is that Black-eyed Kallon was subsequently arrested by riot police and locked up at their headquarters for almost eight hours – despite clearly being the victim of the queen. 'The two have since made up”. On the surface, yes. But Kallon's many supporters are badly scandalised by the way a settlement was stitched up in a minister’s office.
THE GUARDIAN - Johansen has enough of her own problems to worry about. “I used to think that some of the attacks that I had was because of my zero tolerance on corruption,” says Johansen, who believes too many individuals involved in Sierra Leonean football view the national game as “a milking cow”. “But I’m beginning to realise it is because I am a woman”.
TWITTER - We note the kind of language she is using to talk about her opponents. This is where bad blood flows from. We announce for the benefit of our readers that we have completed our investigations into the running of the SLFA since the queen took power. The details will speak for themselves. Keep in touch with Politico.
THE GUARDIAN - “I’m resigned to the fact that my four years of office, of which I’ve done 18 months now, will not be a ceremonial, enjoyable ride. It’s a battle axe, it’s the shovel. But it’s all good because somebody’s got to do it, and if it means that four years on another president comes in and has a much more stable level to work from then I’ll be extremely proud.”
TWITTER - This is where the queen really disappointed us. She should have told The Guardian that her time as SLFA boss was practically over. Here is an impeached woman talking about running the SLFA for two more years or so. This woman just can't face her own members. Even those who helped her take office by controversial means have all now realised their mistakes and have joined forces with those she accuses of seeing the SLFA as 'a milking cow' to throw her out.
The queen has lost the support of those who matter in Sierra Leone Football. She cannot hang on FIFA's toe nails for much longer. Any conscionable person would have resigned. How can you lead people more than 80% of whom did not vote for you in the first place and still hate your guts and your leadership!
The Guardian tells us the interview was conducted at a flat in a place called Chelsea in London. Chelsea is not a place for the kind of people in Sierra Leone Football. Very few of the tens of thousands of Sierra Leoneans who live in London can afford a flat there. So our queen is great whether she stayed with family or not. Our brothers and sisters are packed into a place called Peckham and its surroundings – not a bad place but...leh we dae go nor mor.
In reply, we understand the Football Stakeholders, with Awoko as head, are planning a counter attack. Awoko will soon travel to London. He has a choice of two hotels – one in Mayfair, the other at Knightsbridge. He will grant a lengthy interview to The Telegraph and Daily Mail both of which stand, ideologically, poles apart from The Guardian.
We however warn Awoko not to quote copiously from constitutions and old law books from Sierra Leone. Most journalists get easily bored with provisos and caveats. Safe trip sir!
© Politico 28/01/15
