More by this Author
Veteran football administrator Mohammed Hatimy wants world football governing body Fifa to urgently form a normalisation committee to organise Football Kenya Federation (FKF) elections to end the stand-off in Kenyan football.
Speaking in Mombasa Tuesday, Hatimy, a former chairman of FKF’s precursor Kenya Football Federation, also asked world football body to stop issuing contradictory statements with regard to Kenyan football.
Hatimy, who served as an administrator in Kenyan football for 24 years, asked Fifa to instead show leadership for the sake of the local game.
"I was shocked to read that Fifa had rubbished the ruling of the Sports Disputes Tribunal (SDT) which had cancelled FKF elections and asked the world body to form a normalization committee. It is Fifa’s own statutes which demand that federations should have independent arbitration mechanisms in their respective countries to resolve their disputes,” he said.
Hatimy also asked Fifa to respect Kenyan laws the same way the global body abides by laws that run football in Switzerland where it is based.
"There is no way you can have your cake and it eat. Does Fifa want Kenya stakeholders to go all the way CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) on matters that can easily be handled locally?” he observed, saying that Kenya has a constitution that must be respected.
At the same time, Hatimy has asked FKF chairman Nick Mwendwa to meet all football stakeholders in the presence of Ministry of Sports officials and Fifa representatives so as to come up with a normalization committee as one way of ensuring a smooth transition.
"This is exactly what I did during my tenure when I realised that we were not going to agree on the way forward before the federation’s elections. I called a stakeholders’ meeting where I invited Fifa, the sports ministry my opponents, among them Sam Nyamweya and we formed a normalization committee which organized elections and allowed for smooth transition," he said.
