Ghana FA boss disapproves of 2017 Afcon voting process

Ghana Football Association president Kwesi Nyantakyi has declared that there was lack of transparency in the voting process after Gabon beat Ghana and Algeria to win the rights to host the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations.

Nyantakyi, who is also a member of Caf Executive Committee, said the continental football body president Issa Hayatou only made known the winner without revealing the number of votes each country amassed after the polls.

Earlier this week, a member of Ghana's bid committee, Randy Abbey, who was at Caf headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, during the exercise on Thursday, alleged that the voting process was not fair enough, with Nyantakyi now buttressing that argument.

“Unlike previous occasions even as recent as September when we went to Ethiopia to choose the hosts for 2019, 2021 and 2023, the hosts were chosen on the basis of votes counted and declared publicly at least before the membership of the executive committee so we knew but on this occasion it was not so," Nyantakyi told Citi FM.

“The two non-voting members of the executive committee were entrusted to handle it so they went and counted the ballots and declared the results to the president who announced it publicly.

“For me, as a member of the executive committee, I heard the winner the first time when Issa Hayatou announced it at the press conference which I considered not to be good enough.

“To that extent I fully subscribe to the view that there was limited transparency," he added.

Gabon co-hosted the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations with Equatorial Guinea, with Zambia emerging as winners.