KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTING —- The reign of controversial Ahmad Ahmad as president of the African Football Confederation is effectively over after only one four-year term.

The Madagascar director has been ruled ineligible to stand for re-election by the CAF governance panel after having been banned from all football for five years by the ethics committee of world federation FIFA – of which he was a vice-president.

A committee meeting was convened in Cairo earlier this week under the chairmanship of Michel Kizito Brizoua-Bi of Ivory Coast to run the rule over the five candidates for the presidency and 16 for the executive committee.

Ahmad Ahmad . . . end of the road at FIFA and CAF

The other panel members were Happi Dieudonné (Cameroon), Maya Boureghda (Tunisia), Monica Musonda (Zambia) and Tumi Dlamini (South Africa). Each  member took no part in consideration of candidates from their own country.

Ahmad was barred from standing at the election congress in Rabat on March 12 while further suitability checks are being undertaken for Ahmed Yahya, 44, from Mauritania and for the South African millionaire businessman and Mamelodi Sundowns owner Patrice Motsepe, 58. A decision will follow on January 28.

Approved

The two presidential candidates approved were Augustin Emmanuel Senghor, the 55-year-old head of the Senegalese federation, and Ivory Coast FA president Jacques Anouma, 69.

Ahmad has been barred even though he has announced an intention to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and for a stay of activation over the FIFA ban imposed in November.

The 60-year-old ousted Cameroon’s long-serving Issa Hayatou as CAF president in 2017. He stood for the presidency initially on a platform promising administrative reform, financial transparency and a potential competitions reorganisation.

However all of this was soon relegated to the shadows by a damning report about the realities submitted to FIFA in spring 2019 by Amr Fahmy, then the CAF secretary-general.

Fahmy claimed he had been ordered by Ahmad to pay $20,000 in bribes into accounts of African FA presidents and that CAF had incurred $830,000 in costs by axing an equipment contract with Puma in favour of a little-known French intermediary named Tactical Steel.

He had also used CAF funds to pay for a pilgrimage to Mecca for several members of the executive committee.

On top of all this Ahmad was accused of harassing four female members of the CAF staff, amending statutes to increase Moroccan representation within the organisation and over-spending more than $400,000 of CAF money on cars in Egypt and Madagascar, where he had set up a local office for himself.

Ahmad denied all the allegations.

Exco candidates

The CAF governance committee approved the following candidates for the exco election:

  1. Wadie Jary (Tunisia)
  2. Mustapha Ishola Raji (Liberia)
  3. Djibrilla Hima Hamidou (Niger)
  4. Edwin Simeon- Okraku (Ghana)
  5. Adoum Djibrine (Chad)
  6. Suleiman Waberi (Djibouti)
  7. Isayas Jira (Ethiopia)
  8. Feizal Ismael Sidat (Mozambique)
  9. Elvis Raja Chetty (Seychelles)
  10. Maclean Cortez Letshwithi (Botswana)
  11. Kanizat Ibrahim (Comoros)
  12. Patricia Rajeriarison (Madagascar)
  13. Lawson Hogban-Latré-Kayti Edzona (Togo)
  • Nominations requiring additional verifications:
  1. Mamadou Antonio Souaré (Guinea)
  2. Seidou Mbombo Njoya (Cameroun)
  3. Arthur De Almeida E. Silva (Angola)

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