Beyond Brazil And Presidential Commission, What Next?

Ghana’s campaign to the Brazil 2014 World Cup festival could never have been anticipated to be this abysmal as it turned out to be. The hopes of many Ghanaians were hyped with all the flashy advertisements and promotion of the senior national soccer team, the Black Stars.

For the first time in our third successive appearance at the most prized world sports event, we were going with a Ghanaian coach who as former player of the team, appeared to many as having the zeal and taste for raising the flag of Ghana higher than any previous attempt.

The campaign was not only flashy; it was also immersed in a lot of controversy regarding how much money we were actually spending as a country. The Sports Ministry compounded this by claims of raising corporate funds to support fans who would accompany the team and cheer them up at the tournament as well as some selected celebrities labelled as soccer ambassadors.

As fate would have it, we were not to get anywhere beyond all the brouhaha as to who to take and who not to take along. Our Brazil campaign is so far on record as the most unimpressive world cup attempt. We couldn’t even move beyond the group stage.

Crowning all the shame was the humiliation of lifting a whopping GH₵3million to Brazil against our Laws and International protocols we are signatory to. Why that happened, the Presidential Commission set up by His Excellency the President of the Republic is yet to establish and also find out all other causal factors leading to our early exit from the race.

So far, revelations at the Commission’s hearing are telling and interesting. The Ministries of Sports and Finance have already appeared before the Commission. We are told the Bank of Ghana (BOG) is yet to go to answer questions primarily on financing.

We are yet to see the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) appear before the commission since they also had a lot to do with financing some football fans to Brazil.

What is bothering this paper seriously is what next after all these?

Source: The National Forum