Omari Selemani Constant: A CAF Interim Presidency in Puzzles

Closing the gaps is not as easy as it may look like. After 7^th President of the Confederation of African Football -CAF, Ahmad Ahmad was hastily banned by the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), in November 2020, from holding any office in managing and administrating football related matters for five years because of embezzlement supposedly discovered in the management of finances during his tenure, a replacement was identified temporarily.

Called upon to manage a Confederation in the throes of heartbreak, the Interim President of CAF, the Congolese Constant Omari Selemani is, by force of events, involved somehow in the battle by Four Candidates for One Seat. Four candidates are running for the CAF Presidency seat; only two candidatures have passed the Integrity Checks implemented by a FIFA Panel. Senegalese Augustin Senghor and Ivorian Jacques Anouma are all clear, whereas South African Patrice Motsepe and Mauritanian Ahmed Ould Yahya applications remain in limbo, pending  further interviews convened by CAF Governance Committee on January 28, as instructed by the Panel mentioned above.

As the main chief on board, Constant Omari finds himself in a troubled hue, which makes him cringing in a seat once held by Ydnekatchew Tessema. In this noisy outburst, everyone seems to have their escapades. The Mauritanian is against FIFA’s verdict to carry out “further checks” on his candidacy file. The same applies to Patrice Motsepe; their candidatures are suspnded. Cited as being the major backup body for the candidacy of Augustin Senghor, nephew of the writer and first President of independent Senegal, the late Léopold Sedar Senghor, the Union of West African Football Federations (UFOA) is rumoured to throwing its weight behind the Senegalese. Also, it is accused of shenanigans to block the sole representative of the COSAFA Region for the presidency of CAF.  Patrice Motsepe is blamed of having violated the regulations for the submission of candidatures. The Chairman of Sundowns has submitted his file by email rather than by registered mail. This technicality would be prejudicial to his ambitions, all other things being equal.

There is no longer any shadow of doubt that this is not for the first time that the President of FECOFA deals with tumultuous environments whose similarity with iniquitous ukases experienced previously, in no way shake this clairvoyant solution-finder-man. His robustness has allowed him to be influential in the world and African football, including the corporate too. Omari is eagerly looking to benefiting CAF and Africa from his wealth of experience in managing and administering heavy issues on which the future of African football depends. It would be futile to fall into rave reviews and refrain from recognizing the qualities and merits of the Director of the Commercial Transport and Ports Company (SCTP), known as the National Transport Body (ONATRA) before 2011; a tireless and passionate worker with a brilliant career.

Frustrations are wreaking havoc in the race for the CAF Presidency; lobbying and pressure groups are not left behind, weeks before the fateful day of March 12, 2021 in Rabat. Constant is aware of the solidity and the quintessence of cases submitted in view of the current and immediate challenges. As recently as Monday, he was presented with a case from a group called the Framework for Dialogue by Mauritanian Survivors in Europe and United States of America. In their Open letter to President Omari, these Survivors support the invalidation of the candidacy of the President of the Mauritanian Football Federation, Ahmed Ould Yahya, for the Presidency of the Confederation.

“When the country gained independence in 1960, discrimination was evident in Mauritania, resulting in the exclusion of blacks from the management of the country. These exclusions were accompanied by violence which run from 1986 to1992 with the violation of human rights of the Afro-Mauritanian populations. More than 500 black soldiers were killed, execution style”, the letter emphazises. The president of the organization, Lieutenant Sy Mamadou points out Abderrahme Yahya, the father of the current President of the Mauritania Football Federation, Ahmed Ould Yahya, for having been one of the influential members of the executing squadron. These facts are reminiscent of the painful genocidal events in Rwanda in 1994. It is precisely the genocide of which the diaspora of Mauritanian Survivors accuses Yahya, in addition to the violation of Human Rights.

With regards to his application for the CAF President-candidate, the Governance Committee will also hear Yahya on the dispute between the FFRIM (Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania) and the team of the ASAC Concorde, from Nouakchott. Concorde had brought Yahya to justice, in his capacity as FFRIM President, in September 2016, concerning the embezzlement of transfer fees of its two players, Aly Abeid and El Hacen Id, whom the club had sold to Levante in Spain. Yahya is said to have pocketed € 75,000 from these transactions. He was found guilty in February 2017 by the Nouakchott court, but the FFRIM unsuccessful lodged an appeal. Last year the Judge of Appeal overturned FFRIM claim and upheld the sentence from first degree judgments.

Revelations are surfacing that the CAF old guard, loyal to Ahmad, would be doing everything to prevent Motsepe from taking part in the UFOA meeting whose debut is scheduled this weekend in Praia, the Cape Verdean capital; another bottleneck for Omari Selemenai, and this in full progress of CHAN in Cameroon. In a nutshell, UFOA would strongly support the Confederation preferred candidates-Augustin Emmanuel Senghor and Jacques Bernard Daniel Anouma, President Ad Honoris of the Ivorian Football Federation.

As if Constant Omari’s purse were not yet full, procedural issues would be problematic at the African football governing body. It turns out that the statutes of the organization stipulate that the list of candidates selected for the presidential election as well as the written notices for the ballot of March 12, 2021 during the 43rd Elective Assembly, shall reach the applicants sixty days before the election. This would amount to saying that CAF should have been ready on January 11 at midnight according to the prerequisites of the regulations. Obviously there is a technical defect!

Poor Constant!

What next? Wait and see!