Africa-Press – Namibia. FRANCO Cosmos yesterday refuted suggestions that he was no longer the Namibia Football Association (NFA) secretary general, after Fifa installed a normalisation committee for the second time in four years, due to unrelenting leadership shortcomings.
His future at the national football federation is in the hands of the new interim NFA leadership headed by Bisey Uirab, who is deputised by Afra Schimming-Chase and aided by ordinary members Willy Mertens, Esmeralda Muhinatjo Katjaerua and Dinaa Shituula.
On top of running the NFA’s daily affairs, the committee will oversee the election process for a substantive executive committee; restructure the NFA administration; review the NFA statutes and electoral code to ensure their compliance with the Fifa statutes and requirements, and to ensure their adoption by the NFA congress.
In a letter addressed to Cosmos and detailing Fifa’s position on Namibian football, Fifa general secretary Fatma Samoura said they found that he “had largely contributed to the strong divisions among the members of the executive committee, which eventually led to the split of the committee into two groups, whose positions had become irreconcilable”.
The lack of cohesion eventually led to the dismissal of the entire executive committee which included NFA president Ranga Haikali in December last year.
Cosmos said he will remain in his position until such time that his services are not required. “I’m not fired. The letter did not say I’m fired,” he said.
Cosmos, who served as deputy chair of the first normalisation committee before being kept on by Haikali, also said he was not involved in a court case relating to purported disciplinary breaches as Fifa alluded to.
Samoura said “a national court found him guilty of not having acted in line with his employment contract” with the recommendation that Cosmos be dismissed from the NFA.
The court ruling could not “be enforced by the executive committee in view of the circumstances,” she added. “I’m not aware of such a case. I was never in a national court for a disciplinary matter,” Cosmos said.
Fifa may have been making reference to a disciplinary committee set up by Haikali without the blessing of the executive committee which was rejected, he said.
That Fifa again seized control of the NFA was inevitable as the administration had been compromised by “a group called ‘Progressive Forces’, which was apparently exercising a certain degree of influence on decisions taken within the NFA,” Samoura noted.
Cosmos “received instructions from the Progressive Forces, thus leaving little guarantee that the next NFA elections would indeed be fair, transparent and in line with Fifa’s requirements and principles”.
That observation, by a Fifa-CAF delegation deployed to Namibia in January, adds further weight to suggestions that his time at Soccer House is up. In the interim, the committee will assume their duties with immediate effect, Samoura said. Their mandate expires on 30 April 2023.
“… all members of the normalisation committee must pass an eligibility check to be carried out by the Fifa review committee in accordance with the Fifa governance regulations. Their confirmation will be contingent upon the outcome of the eligibility check,” the senior Fifa official said.
“Furthermore, the Fifa administration, in consultation with CAF, reserves the right to dismiss the members of the normalisation committee and/or to appoint further members at any time.” No committee member will be eligible for the positions to be filled during the elections, for whatever reason.
“Finally, during the normalisation committee’s period of existence, the NFA will have access to its Fifa Forward operational cost and solidarity funds. Any requests linked to the use of project funds will have to be approved by the Fifa development committee, regardless of the funding amount. In addition, a forensic audit of the NFA’s accounts will be carried out as soon as possible,” Samoura said.
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