Deputy Western Regional Women’s Organizer of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Araba Tagoe, has indicated that the initiators of the plot to kick Kwesi Nyantakyi out of the GFA are corrupt football personalities who embezzled monies in the past but are working to undermine the current FA because they no longer enjoy the “chop chop” they used to enjoy while at the FA.
The no-nonsense NDC Regional executive and football enthusiast, made this damning statement in an interview with Happy FM on Thursday.
Speaking to Happy FM’s Kwadwo Mensah Moshoeshoe, Araba Tagoe stated “I want to tell Ghanaians that those condemning Nyantekyi are criminals. Only criminals are working against Nyantakyi and destroying him to get him out of the FA. These are the same people who conspired to embezzle monies which were supposed to be used to renovate the stadium sometime ago while they were at the FA. This was the renovation before the year 2000.
These people were at the FA and created a lot of mess and rot but they are the ones who today are plotting against Kwesi Nyantakyi. They embezzled the money spent on the chairs at the stadium; they know themselves. I am not mentioning their names because they have not shown their faces but if they are men, they should come out and we will expose them”
Madam Tagoe disclosed that she had taken the unusual step to speak on radio against the plots going on because she had been in football for too long and knew those who were bad for football administration in Ghana.
“I have been in football for decades, even before most of those making noise came into football. I started at Vipers and then went to Kotoko; I and Helena Cobbinah formed Kotoko ladies before I came to Hassacas. I’ve been in football for very long so I know what I am talking about. There was a time these same people were conspiring with Ministry accountants to embezzle money while they were at the FA, something I know Kwesi has never done.
Someone called me that we should organize a demonstration against Nyantakyi, I told him that he was doing that because he was no longer enjoying the chop chop at the FA and that I won’t join.”
On the main calls for Kwesi Nyantakyi to resign as FA President, the NDC firebrand rubbished the comments and was amazed that the people who failed to send Ghana to a single World Cup after spending decades at the FA are today calling on Kwesi Nyantakyi to leave the FA even after he has supervised the qualification of Ghana to three successive World Cups.
“Those who were at the FA and embezzled monies and couldn’t send us to even one world cup are those who are today calling Nyantakyi a failure and plotting against him. How many World Cups has Kwesi taken us to? Is it not the same Kwesi Nyantakyi who took us to the World Cup in 2006 and 2010? So if things don’t go well in 2014, how do you conclude based on only that and say he should go?
Did anything happen in Germany or South Africa when we went there? Didn’t we do well in those two World Cups? All you hear them saying is that he has been there for too long but is that a crime? Has he embezzled money? Did he make himself GFA President? Is it not people who voted for him? So what is this issue that he has been at the FA for long?”
Araba Tagoe also dealt with fellow party man, Harry Zarkour, who is reported to have taunted GFA President Kwesi Nyantakyi at a recently organized football forum and is reported to have openly declared his intentions to orchestrate a move to kick out Nyantakyi from the FA.
“Harry Zarkour was at Olympics, where did the team end; he was at Hearts, what structures were put up for Hearts? Look, we shouldn’t do politics with some of these things; people should stop this partisan politics with football. I am speaking as a football activist not NDC activist, if an NDC man starts something and it is not good for our football, I will speak against it. I have been in football for many years, I have seen various GFA chairmen and I know how those people mismanaged our football then.
“I don’t like Kwesi Nyantakyi, even if I am in Accra, ask Kwesi Nyantakyi if I go to him, I don’t but I am saying these things because I am a football activist, I don’t want people destroying it,” she declared.
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