How many victims will it take for clubs to wake up?

Immanuel Ben Misagga

Shortly after last week’s meeting between Fufa and Uganda Premier League (UPL) clubs, two club owners who participated in the meeting told me how the two sides had ceased fire. 
They even talked about how calm and respectful Moses Magogo was throughout, far from his arrogant posture of defiance while fending off calls for resignation after serving a one-month conviction for fraud.

I laughed out very hard because I knew these club owners don’t understand Magogo and his crafty machinations. The Magogo I know can give you Shs 1m and use Shs 10m to fight you. So, I assured them that the vindictive nature of Magogo knows no boundaries and he had set up a booby trap for the ‘ringleaders.’

Less than 24 hours later, a dossier circulated on social media accusing Diana Nyago, the Busoga United boss, of all sorts of wrongs with the club. Shortly after, another letter emerged that the Busoga kingdom had withdrawn its name from the club. What a coincidence that all this happened after the iron lady of UPL chose to challenge the authoritarian actions of Fufa!

I remember back in 2014 when I returned to football administration, Nyago had just bought into Kirinya FC to merge it as Kirinya-Jinja SS. It was an audacious risk but she somehow managed to keep a competitive team that was never in financial or relegation trouble. 

In fact, I greatly commend her for creating an industry-like team that gave many people of Busoga employment not to mention helping the school shine as a beacon of sports. 
During my days as a student of Jinja SS, strikes were routine every month but Nyago stabilized the school into one of the most disciplined. She has sunk in millions of shillings to keep the in the topflight

The growing curve of her success couldn’t fathom being herded around by a federation that is hell-bent on suppressing divergent views. In order to bring her down, Fufa has chosen to portray her in a negative way.

It is quite weird that Busoga United has played a whole season without any fuss but now, Fufa is questioning its registration. The club may even be technically thrown out of UPL next season on grounds of failure to meet Fufa’s licensing guidelines. Remember, it takes three seasons to change a name.

A similar situation happened to me a few years ago during my SC Villa rein when all of a sudden, Magogo got interest in the way the club is run. He even visited our camp before a crucial game against Vipers FC and offered the players Shs 2m as motivation. Little did I know that behind the scenes, he was eating with Villa fans who would vandalize Vipers’ St Mary’s stadium in Kitende. What followed was to deduct points from Villa and that turned out to be the difference between Villa and the league title. 

Then he started questioning the Villa name while fueling hooligans to disrupt Villa activities but when I stepped aside, Fufa withdrew all the witch-hunt and turned the club into its puppet. 

In retrospect, Fufa is also issuing a warning to Bernard Atiku’s Onduparaka and Mwine Mpaka’s Mbarara United. Don’t be surprised if the two teams are relegated next season because all it takes is poor officiating and instigating player uprisings.

Comments

  1. elijahJune 25, 2020 at 5:49 AM

    Hatrage he is always a winner and he is a qualified Eng.

    ReplyDelete

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