Ben Koufie In Fresh Controversy

According to the Soccer Express newspaper, it has stumbled on transcripts of a meeting between Ghana Football Association (GFA) Executive Council Chairman, Y. A. Ibrahim and Management Board Chairman, Ben Koufie which exposes the hatred the two men have for the plan by Ghalca to take over the running of the league plus their disdain for the association’s General Secretary, Kofi Nsiah.

General Secretary Kofi Nsiah was singled out for being travel-happy and accused of being inefficient in a transcript whose fuller contents when released will turn Ghana soccer upside down.

Koufie was blunt at the meeting that the planned takeover was a well orchestrated one involving certain personalities who he claimed had already started their campaign for the FA Chairmanship and cautioned Ibrahim of the need to strategise.

Ibrahim whose ascension to the position of Executive Council Chairman and Congress Vice President was occasioned by the Ghana League Clubs Association did not seem to have any problems with Koufie’s fiery lashing of the clubs’ association and chipped in generously, accusing the association of having no power to change the status quo.

General Secretary Kofi Nsiah definitely must have irked his boss to receive the kind of back lashing Koufie subjected him to.

Koufie told Ibrahim that he had warned the General Secretary on countless occasions about the need not to travel when he (Koufie) is out of town. Then came the coup de grace – "I told him even if you are in, the office lacks something, how much more if you are not in?"

Koufie and Ibrahim then went on to damn a report said to have been presented by Nsiah after his trip to South Africa with three Ghalca officials, but not before he had disclosed that the Minister for Youth, Education and Sports Kwadwo Baah Wiredu was furious when Nsiah travelled to South Africa on a day he was scheduled to hold a follow up meeting with the Minister on plans for the Abuja All Africa Games. "The Minister called me and he was very furious," Koufie recounted after alleging that Nsiah had met with the Minister on the eve of his travel but failed to even hint him.

Ibrahim was more aggressive with his posturing on Ghalca virtually insinuating that they had no power to touch the current FA establishment and boasted, "Even the President cannot change the constitution."

Koufie responded in kind tagging Ghalca as a useless organ, which he discarded even when he was counselled to use them as a flagship to campaign for his position as FA boss when he returned to Ghana. "When I came in they said you can do the job so talk to Ghalca…Am not a fool?"

The meeting touched on the quit notice issued by the Head of Civil Service to the FA to quit its Ministries premises and wondered why the Service was not responding positively to a request that the eviction notice be delayed for a year while a parcel of land obtained by the association is developed into an office.

Koufie also took Graphic Sports’ Sammy Okaitey to the cleaners for reporting comments "I never said" in an interview in the United States during the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

Soccer Express is poring through the lengthy document and will serialise more explosive portions of what the men at the helm of Ghana soccer plan to do to perpetuate their stay in office. Stay tuned.