By Victor Kanayo
An ex-international and former Manchester City forward, Benjani Mwaruwari, has gone to challenge a ruling seeking to prevent him from contesting as the President of the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) in an election scheduled for January 2025.b
Lawyers for Mwaruwari, who disclosed this, said, “Our client is aggrieved by your committee’s decision, and he intends to appeal … without any further delay.
“We are instructed by our client to humbly request that you urgently provide us with full written reasons why your committee concluded that Mr Benjani Mwaruwari fails to meet eligibility criteria stipulated in the ZIFA statutes.”
Benjani, who also played for Portsmouth, Sunderland, and Blackburn in the Premier League, had filed his nomination to become the next president of ZIFA, AP reports.
But an ethics committee of the association on Monday didn’t include the 46-year-old among those eligible to contest the January elections, without immediately giving a reason.
Another prospective ZIFA president barred by the ethics committee is a controversial but popular local cleric, Walter Magaya.
The church founder owns Yadah FC, a club in Zimbabwe’s top tier.
Zimbabwe has been under a FIFA-appointed normalisation committee since July 2023, when football’s governing body lifted the southern African country’s 17-month international ban caused by government interference.
