FIFA and Ghana: Has justice really come?

The news that the global soccer-controlling body, the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), has come under the octopus lens of the American justice system is very welcome indeed.

The apex of this important news is the announcement two or so days ago that the FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, would be resigning soon, either as a result of the United States (US) Justice Department securing indictments against high FIFA officials, or the stench of corruption which has been marked by the unexpected indictments, or both.
Blatter characteristically gave a different reason for his decision to quit; that he does not enjoy universal support in the organisation that he has headed for so long and which had overwhelmingly renewed his mandate just days before.

Impunity

FIFA as an organisation has become a byword for impunity. No sovereign nation could even begin to question or investigate its activities because it had vaccinated itself by putting its affairs beyond the legal reach of mere sovereign nations.
FIFA had thoroughly and completely abused the passionateness of billions of all people on the globe to engage in the most annoying conduct, all for the sake of football and the real happiness and sadness its triumphs and defeats to men and women all over the world.
Every elected and also unelected government in this country which has tried to make our own football association to account for its conduct has been shot down by the enveloping extra-territorial powers that FIFA has clothed itself with, thus transferring the anger and frustrations of Ghanaians to the government of the day.
At least I recall President Kufuor had to personally appeal to players because the latter had problems with one or two Ghanaian Football Association (GFA) officials who eventually escaped scrutiny and accountability because they claimed the protection of batty FIFA rules. Same with current President Mahama.
None of this arrogance and pointless pride rooted in sheer greed impressed the Americans who are not as soccer-crazy as we are, and thus prone to inaction. A country with a record of prosecuting the dreaded Mafia out of existence and putting greedy Wall Street sharks in jail was unimpressed by the web of iron laws of extraterritoriality woven with such impunity around FIFA by its leaders.
For the Ghanaian minions of FIFA who trumpet the legal invincibility of FIFA at each and every turn of their travails, they should now be thinking a new day of national accountability has dawned, and prepare themselves accordingly.
I wholly subscribe to the views of Justice Appau at his vetting in Parliament last Tuesday that he found it very difficult to understand why the FA could not be investigated by the government over public funds.
“If money has been voted for the GFA to run the association, the money is not for the GFA. It is for the country, Ghana, because GFA is a subset of the country. It is Ghana that finances the activities of the GFA. When the national teams are going outside the country, they go to the Ministry of Youth and Sports who will also run to the Ministry of Finance to look for money to run the association. Why is it that when money comes from FIFA, they don’t want the government to know what happened to that money?’’
As he rightly said, all this must happen because our passion is football. I daresay that it is precisely because of our passion for football that FIFA has found the strength to abuse all rules of accountability and still maintain an iron grip on the game in every member country.
FIFA has systematically cultivated a culture of brazen lack of accountability in member countries to the detriment of sound sports administration in member countries. In this country, as far back as anyone can recall, sports ministers and their deputies have always left office under a cloud centring on unaccountable disbursements from FIFA.
The organisation has become an easy defence for corruption in sporting affairs and in the political lives of many political figures.
It is no defence to aver that Blatter’s administration saw the entry of Asia and Africa into world cup tournaments and staging of the game.
We must all encourage the Attorney General of the United States to persist to the very end, and cage all the people in FIFA who have found in our passion for soccer the reason to continually abuse us without mercy to the public purse of poor countries.
Of course, the criticism from local quarters over the actions of the American Justice Department cannot be glossed over. It is not grounded in the laudable quest for accountability in all spheres of public life, but rather in the equally laudable quest for fair representation of those of us who had hitherto not been represented for one reason or the other.
On this basis, Blatter is seen as a champion and his ouster a sign of the coming restrictiveness of FIFA.

Changes

But the world of international sports has changed dramatically; there cannot be a return to the days when the game of soccer was monopolised by the Europeans and the South Americans.
The interest the new entrants have brought into soccer has affected positively the income of FIFA and no one would prefer to do away with this to justify a return to the old days. It is a weak argument. Blatter’s FIFA has done a lot for the inclusion of African and Asian football on the world stage, but it has come at a price which some of us cannot afford. He would have served his legacy better if he had not hung on for so long.