August 22 – Ghana’s investigation into their national team’s poor performance at the World Cup has uncovered discrepancies in the numbers of the supporter group that was officially sent to Brazil. Instead of the expected 612 fans, which had official seats on chartered flights, 696 found their way across.
The welfare committee subsequently catered for these extra fans. As the Minister of State, Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah stated: “We took care of all of them.” Once they had arrived the committee was reluctant to turn them away because of the potential dangers that entailed. Ankrah could not, however, account for where the increased number of fans came from, and how they came to be there.
GH¢4,483,262 had been raised to cover the costs of air tickets, accommodation, food, drink, printing of souvenir items, seating allowances for World Cup planning committee officials, development and maintenance of a dedicated website and mobile application, organization of Presidential Ball and, the all important, match tickets. But this figure was not meant to cover the additional 84 supporters that appeared.
The additional fans became further problematic when the time came to airlift the supporters back. Travel Matter, African Origin and Sports Tourism, and Kenpong Travel and Tours formed a consortium to pre-finance travel home for the supporters, to be reimbursed at a later date, but failed to comply with the manifest. They, allegedly, included their own supporters on the flight, to the exclusion of the government-sponsored supporters, who were left stranded in Brazil.
How this information relates to the number of Ghanaians that sought asylum in Brazil has not been explained. In fact, it has been ignored thus far.
The more publicized issue of player fees has also been a topic of discussion during the investigation.
It has been revealed that the players initially requested a $120,000 fee for their appearance. The Ghana Football Association, supposedly due to lack of funding, agreed on $100,000 per player instead. However, the government only approved $82,500, which was communicated to the players as early as March. This sum was a 10% increase on the fee that the players received for representing their country at the previous world cup ($75,000).
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