By Victor Kanayo
The Mali Football Federation is currently in dire straits after key stakeholders petitioned the World football governing body, FIFA, ahead of its proposed election.
One of them is Sekou Diogo Keita, a former vice-president of Femafoot who is now the second Malian to write to FIFA General Secretary, Fatima Samoura, after Mali’s Sports Minister Abdoul Kassim Ibrahim Fomba also wrote to ask for help overseeing the elections, citing a “real urgence”.
Fomba wrote, “The candidates have identified specific points of violations of the texts, which, according to our reading, are likely to call into question the whole process and make us relive a new crisis in football.”
Fomba was mindful not to be seen as interfering in the federation’s affairs, given that FIFA set up a Normalisation Committee to run Femafoot in 2017 to revise statutes and conduct elections after it banned Mali following government interference in the running of its football.
On the pitch, Mali are preparing for January’s Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast while its Under-23 team will contest the Paris Olympics this time in 2024.
The threat of a further FIFA ban for governmental interference has also prevented Keita from filing a lawsuit against those running Femafoot – and how they have used funds, including those received in annual grants from Fifa – in the Malian courts.
“We did not go to the civil court because Femafoot always tells everyone that as this is money from Fifa, no one can interfere with how it is spent – even the state,” he told BBC Sport Africa.
