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Ndoum slams GFA for cancelling league
According to him the local football governing body had no locus to cancel the league without consulting the club owners and wondered why such a unilateral decision could be taken when the GFA was merely an administrative body.
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“Who is this that is cancelling this league, and who is this that is considering the financial and the health impact of all of this?” he inquired during an interview with UK-based GN Radio and Channel 7 TV.
He noted that the FA should have contacted him first as a club owner before taking such a decision, but he was not involved during the decision-making, a practice he condemned.
“It is not the club owners, and strange enough in Ghana, it is not the club owners who are calling for the cancellation, and nobody called me as a club owner to ask me what is my opinion to be done."
According to the businessman, football administrators were put in their positions by the clubs and do not invest anything into the game, and as such should not assume so much power to decide what should be done at any given time.
“We have people they're calling as football administrators; a football administrator doesn't have a penny or a pesewa in the game. Somebody who is elected by people we have employed to work for us cannot tell me, and shouldn't be put in a position to tell me what I should and should not do," he said.
Dr Ndoum, who was also the Presidential candidate for the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) during the 2016 general elections, also stated that the clubs were a private entity and knew how to run their business but it appeared government was interfering with their affairs this time around.
"It should not be up to government to tell a private enterprise what to do, except what the government is telling everybody else what to do.
"It is about time that the people who have invested in football as private enterprises that we are should be the ones calling for the cancellation of football in Ghana, and that a league should be there that is owned, managed and controlled by those who have invested in football in Ghana.
“This is what happens in the UK and those administrators they've hired, they come and go, but it is the owners who make the decisions," he noted.
“Owners of the big clubs in the English Premier League get together and they have a strong affiliation to help each other in terms of commercial, there's nothing that stops Ghana from doing that same financial considerations.
“It is the owners who should have sat down to decide [whether] we can handle it this way or not, but nobody talked to us. I hear that there was a call among the managers of the teams but the managers that I have recruited and I pay cannot go and make decisions for me", he stated