Kumasi patrons of Anas video want Nyantakyi prosecuted
After watching the investigative video by Anas Aremeyaw Anas on corruption in football administration in Ghana in Kumasi last Saturday, some patrons have called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to ensure the prosecution of Kwesi Nyantakyi, the immediate past President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA).
They said from the Anas’s exposé, Nyantakyi had brought the Presidency into disrepute and tarnished President Akufo-Addo’s personality.
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The patrons, who were visibly angry during the showing of the video, yelled and screamed as the different scenes rolled on the screen.
Some of them had queued at the Central Classroom Block (CCB) Auditorium of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi to get access to watch the video, which ended at midnight last Saturday.
The shocking revelations in the video prompted some of the patrons to call for the prosecution of all those involved in the corruption, bribery and fraud in football administration, otherwise others might be emboldened to indulge in similar practices in future.
Some of the patrons who spoke with the Daily Graphic after the showing of the video said the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) could suffer collateral damage in the next general election if those found to have received bribes were not punished.
They called for the suspension of the national teams from all international competitions for at least three years and the restructuring of the local league with the training of a new breed of referees.
They also called on the Ghana League Clubs Association (GHALCA) to call for an immediate congress and disband the GFA’s Executive Committee and replace it with an interim management committee (IMC) to run the GFA.
Video
The video showed that the President of the GFA strayed from football matters to the realms of politics after he had been baited by undercover investigators with $65,000 to facilitate contracts and access to the Presidency.
He claimed that the President could be offered $5 million and the Vice-President $3 million to secure contracts.
Nyantakyi resigned his position last week, while the FIFA Ethics Committee has banned him from all football-related matters for 90 days.
In the video, Nyantakyi mentioned a Deputy Minister of Roads, Mr Anthony Karbo, as the link man to the Presidency.
Surprise
The narration by Mr Nyantakyi got everybody glued to their seats, sending jitters down their spines.
Apparently carried away by the huge sums of money that could possibly be involved in the deals, including the construction of 90 bridges in the Northern Region and using by-products from the oil sector to manufacture fertiliser, Nyantakyi drew up a scheme on how contract sums could be transferred into his non-banking financial institution.
After proposing about $11 million of bribe money to be shared among some cronies, Nyantakyi and one Abu, who until recently was the Northern Regional Chairman of the GFA, realised that they had made a mistake and that they should have proposed an amount between $13 million and $15 million.
The video, which also revealed how referees took bribes to influence the outcome of football matches and shady visa deals by some officials of the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the National Sports Authority, literally swept patrons off their feet.
About 100 referees, including Samuel Sukar, were uncovered in all kinds of mechanisms of how a football match could be manipulated and even how a player could be shown a yellow card.
Even female referees at budding stages of their careers were caught fixing the outcome of matches at the second and the third tiers of the football league.