Some football fans have staged a peaceful demonstration yesterday and later converged on the Cotton Tree to “mourn the death of football in Sierra Leone”.
Calling themselves the Patriotic Citizens and Concerned Sports fans, the processors about 200 in number, mainly young people who are involved with the sports, said they were concerned at the deterioration of interest in the game.
Fatmata Kamara, a member, said they had staged the demonstration because they wanted to draw attention to the current situation of the sports while calling for improvement in football across the country.
“In that vein we have presented our petition paper to President Ernest Bai Koroma and we are waiting to hear from him,” she said, adding that most of them were either constant listeners or contributors to the various sporting programs in the country.
According to the petition paper, seen by Politico, President Koroma made no mention about sports or the state of affairs of football in his last speech in parliament.
“This for us reinforced the feeling that the football is dying,” they said.
They recalled that the last time the country ever qualified and participated in any major tournament, especially football, was in 2003 when the U-17 qualified to the African Youth Tournament and World Cup in Swaziland and Finland respectively.
The petition also made reference to the current state of the Sierra Leone Athletics Association (SLAA) after the abortive congress and the controversial elections at Eastern Paddys.
“We anticipate a parallel body within the association. The athletes are seriously affected because age is telling on them”, they said.
They recommended that the Sports Minister, Paul Kamara, must play a supervisory role instead of direct interference in the running of various sporting disciplines.
The ministry of sports and the sports council must implement the national sports policy.
The asked that the 7-man Committee of the SLFA must be reinstated; the SLFA congress must be held in March 2016; the match fixing allegation must be investigated; all sporting associations should work hand in gloves with their general membership and see each other as partners in development and congress must be held regularly by all sporting associations.
Government has made no official statement on the petition paper but efforts to get officials at the ministry of sports have proved futile.
Meanwhile, officials at the SLFA said they had not received any such petition paper and but felt that the approach was not entirely appropriate.
Head of media at the SLFA, Abubakarr Kamara, said the position paper was biased against the president of the FA and complained that as people who were concerned about sanity in football, they were supposed to have taken a neutral ground in addressing all stakeholders.
(C) Politico 03/02/16
