September 11 – In a somewhat unusual turn of events, Amaju Pinnick (pictured), whose own Nigerian federation was embroiled in a bitter leadership struggle and narrowly avoided a FIFA ban, has been selected by FIFA to lead the organisation’s normalisation committee in Ghana.
Ghanaian football has been in near crisis ever since its FIFA Council member and Confederation of African Football (CAF) vice president, Kwesi Nyantakyi, was forced to step down after been implicated in a bribery scandal after being pictured taking $65,000 from an undercover reporter pretending to be a businessman.
Pinnick was quickly catapulted into Nyantakyi’s CAF vice-presidency and now takes on the role of trying to sort out the mess in Ghana even though his own country narrowly avoided being thrown out of international football after agreeing to recognise Pinnick as the FIFA-approved head of its federation.
Pinnick had been locked in a bitter leadership dispute with Chris Giwa, who headed a rival faction having won a court ruling in June after protesting the result of elections that brought Pinnick to power.
Ghana, too, was on the verge of being thrown out when authorities threatened to dissolve the GFA in the wake of the Nyantakyi case and conduct fresh elections. Instead a road map for cleaning up the game was agreed with FIFA, ending weeks of uncertainty.
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