Nakivubo stadium may never be recovered and that leaves Maroons FC’s Luzira pitch as the only facility to host games in Kampala. As a result, some clubs have been forced to play games as early as noon in order to accommodate other games later in the afternoon.
Ironically, here is a federation that has a stadium in Njeru but cannot allow it to be used by any clubs and would rather see it rot away as a white elephant. Whereas this chaos seems a temporary setback, it exposes the poor planning capacity of Fufa and its persistent lies to develop the football infrastructure in the country.
I’ve observed how instead, Fufa expends a great deal of energies to frustrate football investors, especially those that aim to start stadiums. I experienced this first-hand when I tried to shift SC Villa to my five-acre piece of land in Gayaza and a similar fate befell Jimmy Lukwago of Kira Young. Even Dr Lawrence Mulindwa was only able to set up the St Mary’s stadium in Kitende after a protracted battle with Fufa.
I know a number of football fans and businessmen who would like to enter joint partnerships with Fufa but they have always been frustrated by the greedy approach of the federation yet Fufa loses nothing when it puts up a conducive atmosphere for investors.
Even when the chance arises to meet President Museveni, Fufa should lobby for infrastructural assistance more than money for The Cranes because the national team has enormous funding.
KADIBA SHAM
More tellingly, this exposes the maladministration and corruption within the top football setup. When Fifa president Gianni Infantino visited Uganda in February 2017, he commissioned the start of a $4.4m (Shs 15.4bn) stadium in Lubaga.
Back then, Fufa fronted this five-acre piece of land, which was donated by Namirembe diocese, as the most important component in its quest to develop the game in the country. What Infantino wasn’t informed was that Moses Magogo, the embattled Fufa president who was recently convicted of fraud, was merely using Kadiba as a tool to promote his own agenda.
As it turned out, Fufa secured all the funds within a year and in April last year, Magogo postured to break ground for the facility.
However, that was the last of it and no progress has been made since, leaving me to wonder where those funds were diverted. It is on this background that there is need for a serious probe into the finances of the federation, especially in the wake of a self-confessed guilty plea of fraud by Magogo. .
josephmbazzi@gmail.com
The author is Nyamityobora FC president.