Last weekend, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) saw reason and rightly lifted the four-year ban imposed on Togo for pulling out of this year’s African Nations Cup staged in Angola.
The decision, taken at its Executive Committee Meeting in Cairo, Egypt, confirmed an agreement reached after mediation by world football’s governing body, FIFA, in Zurich two weeks ago.
This means Togo can now compete in the qualifiers for the 2012 Nations Cup, as well as other international competitions. And this piece of news is no doubt a good one not just for Togo but all football fans, as the decision was taken in the interest of the beautiful game.
At the mediation meeting held in Zurich, the FIFA President, Joseph Sepp Blatter, said the agreement reached after both parties had made some concessions was an indication that “we can solve internal disputes within the football family for the benefit of all those who are involved in our game, and in particular for the players”.
The DAILY GRAPHIC commends CAF for finally seeing reason and lifting the ban, but the paper is unhappy that it had to take the intervention of FIFA for the ban to be lifted.
Before this latest development, there had been several failed attempts to get CAF to rescind its decision, but to no avail.
We recall that well-meaning organisations such as the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), as well as leading personalities such as President J.E.A Mills, made passionate appeals to CAF to rescind its decision but the continental football-controlling body remained adamant and stuck to its guns, with the flimsy excuse that it was only applying the rules and regulations on its statutes.
Indeed, we are happy that FIFA finally succeeded in getting CAF to lift the ban, but the continental body’s disregard of the pleas from people of high standing on the continent is a sad reflection of the African’s inability to solve an African problem.
If we may ask: What real changes were there between the position of our African statesmen and bodies and that of FIFA? What magic wand did FIFA wave to get CAF to finally see reason?
We are all aware that laws all over the world are made by man and, much as we all wish that these laws would always be applied to the letter, it is sometimes very important to carefully weigh offences against peculiar circumstances.
For us, the Togo case was one such issue which needed to be handled with great tact, diplomacy and circumspection, given the fact that lives were lost and the players, who were due to participate in the tournament some two days later, had been completely traumatised.
It was against that background that we saw the earlier position of CAF as being very bookish and pedantic. And the more it hung on hard and fast to its rules and regulations, the more we pitied it.
Now that the dust has finally settled, the DAILY GRAPHIC hopes CAF will learn a lot of lessons from the ordeal. Perhaps one of the immediate things CAF must do is fine-tune its statutes to take care of extraordinary situations such as the one in which the Togolese found themselves.
Whatever it is, let us drive home this point here and now: Never again must CAF sink so low in refusing to give an ear to our respected leaders and organisations. It is not good for the game; it is an insult to our integrity.
Africans are capable of solving their own problems — at least we amply demonstrated this on this occasion. But for the awkward posture of CAF, this matter would not have gone as far as to FIFA.
But this should not happen again; never ever.
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