A former Vice- Chairman of the Ghana Football Association (GFA). Nana Yaw Owusu Akwanuasa, has described as “a panic reaction” the constitution of a 60-member group to diagnose and prescribe solutions for the shortfalls of Ghana’s Brazil 2014 World Cup campaign in order to forestall a recurrence.
In a statement issued to Graphic Sports, he said the work of the group of eminent football administrators and former football stars was not only a knee-jerk reaction to the poor performance of the Black Stars, but also likely to result in a duplication of work by the three-member commission established by President John Mahama to probe Ghana’s World Cup campaign in Brazil and related issues.
“There is going to be a duplication of duties between this committee and the Presidential Commission established earlier to address the same challenges that confronted us in Brazil, so one gets the impression that we are operating in a panic situation and, therefore, rushing to find answers to our problems,” bemoaned Nana Yaw Owusu, who was the FA vice- president between 1986 and 1990 in the late Sam Okyere’s administration.
Explaining further, he said the government had already established a probe into the saga surrounding the lacklustre performance of the Black Stars and come out with the appropriate recommendations and, therefore, wondered why another group met to perform similar functions.
“The commission established by the President has not even started its work, but we now have another group to consider how best we can reshape Ghana football.
“I don’t think we are in any crisis, so crisis management does not apply here,” he noted.
Commending the government for its initiative of establishing the three-member commission, he said it was “appropriate” because the country was confronted with the normal exercise of a post-mortem analysis of what went wrong in Brazil and what corrective measures could be applied.
“One would have thought that the Presidential Commission would have been allowed to finish its job so that the 60-man group could use some of the recommendations that may come out from the commission’s report”.
