Osasu Obayiuwana – Inside World Football

Osasu Obayiuwana: Will PwC audit bring a day of reckoning for CAF’s toxic culture?

Paul Nicholson — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 09:20:04 +0000

When two [or more] elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers” – African proverb.

When FIFA, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL and the OFC were brought to their knees, in 2015, as a result of the financial scandals that exposed shocking levels of graft and maladministration in the game, informed watchers of the African football landscape always wondered when the continent’s inevitable moment of reckoning would come, as it was virtually unscathed during this tumultuous period.

Who sets Africa’s agenda? Its elected leaders? Or Europeans?

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 10:24:33 +0000

“We must find an African solution to our problems” – Kwame Nkrumah (Prime Minister of Ghana, 1957-1966)

Anyone with an acute sense of history will remember how, in the late 1980s, the master-servant relationship between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Western financial institutions, on the one hand, and financially troubled African nations on the other, led to the imposition of flawed ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes’ (SAP) that devastated the economies of the countries that borrowed money under these onerous SAP terms and conditions.

Has CAF cut its own safety net with its financial tightrope walk?

Paul Nicholson — Fri, 15 Nov 2019 10:39:01 +0000

“In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge

While the decision of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to unilaterally terminate its 12-year $1 billion contract with Lagardere Sports (LS) continues to reverberate around the continent – and outside of it – informed Insideworldfootball readers will not be surprised about the development.

As I had reported, on 30 September, the bells had started tolling loudly for LS – See Lagardere’s CAF contract under threat as FIFA-led admin makes new commercial play –

The bells toll for the biennial Africa Cup of Nations

Paul Nicholson — Sat, 26 Oct 2019 16:59:34 +0000

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley

FIFA’s decision to stage an expanded 24-team Club World Cup (CWC) in China, which will take place between June 17 and July 4 2021, has serious and grave implications for the future of Africa’s most prestigious tournament – the biennial Cup of Nations.

There is really no other way to put it.

Osasu Obayiuwana: Unravelling the CAF and Lagardere money myths

Paul Nicholson — Fri, 26 Jul 2019 17:50:01 +0000

After the shenanigans of the last few days, and weeks, in the Byzantine world of Confederation of African Football (CAF) politics, where Niccolo Machiavelli clearly has his ardent disciples – in the art of ruthless political bloodletting and the decimation of perceived, real and feared adversaries – my original plan was to write a column on the serial governance missteps that are a clear existential threat to the organisation.

As keen followers of the African game are acutely aware,

Osasu Obayiuwana: CAF’s Champions League blunder reflects deeply fractured leadership

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 04:03:24 +0000

In the three decades I’ve covered African football, I have gone through the entire gamut of emotions: exhilaration – over some of the continent’s great moments at the Africa Cup of Nations and the World Cup; frustration – over the comedic errors our football governors repeatedly make; and deep despair, as one continually questions whether the custodians of a game that means so much, to Africa’s one billion people, will ever live up to their responsibilities and do their darned jobs diligently.

Osasu Obayiuwana: Mission Unaccomplished

Paul Nicholson — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 15:57:17 +0000

Insideworldfootball columnist, Osasu Obayiuwana, a member of the now dissolved FIFA Task Force Against Racism and Discrimination, shares his personal experiences and disappointment with FIFA’s half-hearted attempt to address racial and discriminatory issues in football.

FIFA’s decision, that they had enough of the Anti-Racism Task Force – set up to help excise a cancerous scourge on the game – came to me as a run-of-the-mill e-mail on Friday, the 23rd of September 2016.

The post Osasu Obayiuwana: Mission Unaccomplished appeared first on Inside World Football.

Osasu Obayiuwana: After 2015 triumph CAF fashions another rod for its own back

Paul Nicholson — Mon, 11 May 2015 09:16:44 +0000

Any journalist with experience of covering the Africa Cup of Nations knows it is not a particularly easy assignment at the best of times, as the lack of adequate telecommunications, transport and hotel infrastructure in several host nations often makes the three-week tournament a test of resilience and fortitude.

Thank goodness for the pulsating on-field drama that provides us with several tournament memories that make the logistical palaver a pain worth bearing.

But even old Nations Cup hands were sorely tested by the particularly difficult conditions in Equatorial Guinea,

Osasu Obayiuwana: African rule changes ensure there will be no change

Paul Nicholson — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 21:00:44 +0000

A sad, very disturbing, fact remains constant, over the decades I’ve covered the African game, which is fuelling my deepening pessimism about its future – the ruthless cultivation of a reactionary climate that is extremely hostile to the desperately needed transformation of CAF, the continent’s governing body, into an organisation that will finally command the genuine respect of the global fraternity and use its political capital in the interests of those it ought to primarily serve.

Osasu Obayiuwana: Nigeria’s football Inferno, where chaos has propagated chaos

Paul Nicholson — Tue, 12 Aug 2014 22:43:21 +0000

When it comes to the August 26 elections for the presidency and executive committee of the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) – if they actually happen on that day – it is evident, to keen watchers of its politics, that the more things change, the more they remain the same. For the fourth successive NFF poll, since 2005, Africa’s most populous nation is caught in the whirlwind of chaos and anarchy that typically accompanies the battle for control of the game’s administrative levers,