Kirunda demise reveals FUFA's purge on ex-internationals.

IMMANUEL BEN MISAGGA

The date May 25 should be enshrined in Ugandan football history for two major contrasts. 

That morning, as the top Fufa leadership met in Mengo to share its weekly sitting allowances [loot] from Fifa’s $500,000 Covid-19 emergency fund and also forge a way to handle the backlash from the abrupt stoppage of the 2019/2020 football season, Jimmy Kirunda, the greatest leader in Ugandan football history, was walking the streets of Bwaise when he collapsed and died.

What makes the two events intertwined is the fact that on one hand, Kirunda dedicated his entire life to the success of Ugandan football but when Moses Magogo, the discredited, took over the Fufa leadership in 2013, he immediately sacked him from the role of adviser. Magogo instead preferred to assemble a team of people who have never sacrificed anything tangible in Ugandan football.

That was the start of the end of Kirunda, who had to endure the last days of his life physically, mentally, and financially handicapped. 

His death was greeted by an outpouring of eulogies from friends and former contemporaries. Fufa unashamedly pledged to take over the burial expenses of the man they ordered not to step a foot at the Fufa house and got their usual praise singers to shift Kirunda’s demise on his ‘lack of planning after football.’ This was despicable. Reading James Bakama’s story that Fufa flatly and deliberately refused to contribute to Kirunda’s Shs 1.7m medical bill got me very angry. 

Why take food to Kirunda’s burial when you would have given him that food to help him survive and live a dignified life?

It was wrong for Fufa to show concern after Kirunda’s death, especially when they knew his poor health situation beforehand. Dr Lawrence Mulindwa had brought Kirunda on board to offer that much-needed technical support at Mengo but Magogo summarily fired him within a few days of taking office by throwing away Kirunda’s files outside his office.

I highly doubt Kirunda was getting more than Shs 1.5m per month but this was enough to sustain him for the time. That is why even President Museveni does not entirely get rid of his people who have served him; he retains them as presidential advisors.

The firing of Kirunda’s was just the start of Magogo’s purge of ex-internationals and within a year, they had been scrapped as members of the Fufa assembly. It was a deliberate ploy to get rid of people with respectable profiles.

A few years ago, I found Polly Ouma in dire straits and brought him at Villa as technical adviser. It had a lot to do with my desire to rehabilitate him after Fufa discarded him. But Fufa officials often pleaded with me to get rid of Ouma and mobilized some fans to fight him. 

I know the Fufa executive feels more secure by keeping the ex-internationals at arm’s length but this is counterproductive because when the current generation of players see their heroes struggling, they become mercenaries, eager to get rich quick so that they can run away from the game with little focus on developing their careers.

The deliberate act of dismembering footballing bodies like EXIFA is a clear testament that FUFA is competing with the game they are purportedly supervising. The hunger for amplifying egos and self-aggrandisement by FUFA officials most of whom never played football, is a big motivation for them to diffuse emergence and contribution to football development by an organised group of former players. Instead they have opted to mobilise a few former football journeymen whom they pay and parade at FUFA assemblies to hoodwink the unsuspecting media personnel and the general public.

For instance, I was shocked in 2017 when midfielder Nicholas Kasozi demanded I pay him $40,000 to return to Villa. His reasoning is that he has a few years in the sport and he has to milk every opportunity as possible. 

Now that Kirunda is gone, it is time for the current players and ex-internationals to know a player’s value in the football chain. So long as Magogo and cohorts are still in charge, know that your importance starts and stops on the pitch and may be also to be paraded at State House while arm-twisting government for presidential envelopes.

Fufa can start atoning for Kirunda by apportioning part of the $500,000 to save ex-internationals or include their plight in the annual budget.

The least Fufa can do for Kirunda is to erect a monument in his honour.