Nunoo Mensah, Zwennes for GOC presidency?
Kwame Larweh Sports News
Former athletics chief, George Haldane Lutterodt, has tipped the president of the Ghana Weightlifting Association, Ben Nunoo Mensah, and the president of the Ghana Boxing Authority (GBA), Peter Zwennes, as the persons who have the capability to lead the Ghana Olympic Commitee (GOC) when nominations open for elections in March next year. He dreaded the re-election of incumbent Professor Francis Dodoo and told the Graphic Sports in an interview yesterday in Accra that the president of the Ghana Athletics Association (GAA) had reduced the GOC moribund.
“Under Dodoo, GOC fell from its lofty heights to a very low public esteem and lacked transparency,” he stated.
According to Mr Lutterodt, who was an Ambassador for Peace in this year’s elections, during the Benson Tongo (B.T) Baba’s reign, the GOC was the bread winner for all sporting disciplines relative to the provision of sporting equipment.
He dispelled the notion that during the Professor Dodoo administration the GOC lacked funds to operate and run its activities.
“It is the GOC that rather sources funds and acquires sponsorship to support the sporting disciplines and not the government giving them money as we are seeing in this current Professor Dodoo administration,” he said.
Mr Lutterodt, who was the chairman of the GAA from 2001 to 2004, charged the President-elect, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to take the growth and development of sports seriously.
He told this paper that having been friends with the President-elect for more than 35 years, he believed he was up to the task and could help sports grow again.
The 60-year-old sports enthusiast and financier entreated Nana Akufo-Addo to appoint a competent person to manage sports since sports is a very important tool for national unity and a major source of employment for the youth.
“The past eight years we have had eight different sports ministers at the Sports Ministry and this is not good for the country”, he lamented.
It would be recalled that legal practitioner Peter Zwennes was one of the three member commission team selected last week to oversee the election of a new GOC president in March next year.