Unlike other Kenyans who are possessed by the evil spirit of opposing everything that the Government has been doing — or rather, has been pledging to do — I am driven largely by the fervour of patriotism, which has guided me to propose just one thing that the Sports CS Kipchumba Murkomen should do.
Just early this week, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) gave Kenya 25 days within which to complete work on the stadiums expected to host the African Nations Championship (CHAN).
CAF is the body that governs football in Africa and CHAN is the continental football showpiece that features players based in their home countries. The difference between CHAN and AFCON is that the latter also features players based in the African Diaspora.
Last year, East Africa successfully bid to host both CHAN 2025 and AFCON 2027 through what was then known as the “Pamoja Bid”. Are we together so far?
Just to bring the Government — through the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Heritage — to speed, the CHAN tournament, which will feature 19 teams, will be played from February 1 to 28. That means it is just two and half months away, and that is the crux of the problem we face as a country.
Kenya’s co-hosts, Uganda and Tanzania long completed work on their stadiums where the matches featuring Africa’s best footballers will be played. And, as we like saying every time the opportunity comes up, they are less developed economically than Kenya.
Interestingly, the more developed Kenya — the gateway to East Africa — is still struggling to make grass grow on the proposed venues, none of which is ready to host the tourney.
It is yet to start numbering the seats on which fans are expected to sit as they watch the stars from across Africa battling for football honours. In one case, it is yet to complete the skeleton works, let alone put the finishing touches.
And a few days ago, CAF inspectors gave Kenya 25 days to get ready, which means we now have 20 or so days to go.
Call Kenyans what you may, but it is not acceptable that the Ministry of Sports continues to perpetuate a negative sports culture and to undermine the country’s heritage by failing to build just one usable football stadium.
It is possible that some evil spirits have conspired to ensure that all these years after independence, the Ministry has not found it suitable to build a football stadium or cause one to be built through the now infamous Public Private Partnerships (PPPs).
That means except for those Kenyans who have travelled abroad and watched a match there, no citizen of this country has ever set foot in a football stadium, just as many have never seen an airport with their eyes.
All stadiums in Kenya are either political — for holding rallies and hosting national holidays — or for athletics. As a result, pitches are thrown in either as an afterthought or for field events, such as javelin and discuss.
Because of this spirit of opposing the building of football stadiums, just this first week of December, FIFA decreed that Harambee Stars, our national team, will play its World Cup qualifiers home matches in Lilongwe, Malawi.
This is a country whose civil servants used to travel to Kenya for benchmarking just a few years ago. Lilongwe has a population of 1.3 million, making it the size of Eastlands, Nairobi. Kenyan fans must, therefore, travel to Malawi to watch their team play “at home”. If we did not know an oxymoron, here clearly, is a stark one.
Which is why, rather than oppose the Government, I have taken it upon myself to propose to it. It must put its Cabinet Secretary in charge of sports, Mr Murkomen, to task so that he can use magical powers to finish preparation works on the three stadiums before Christmas.
It is a Herculean task, but it is not Sisyphean. We have, after all, seen in the recent past, that whenever Government wanted something done in 24 hours, it got done. We encourage it to want the construction of the stadiums finished sooner rather than later.
And we know the consequences of failure.
In that one month of the upcoming tournament, all the money will go to Tanzania and Uganda unless we style up. Fans from all over Africa will skip Kenya to go cheer their teams across the border unless we put our act together and get the work done.
Never mind that we are paying the heavy price of years of dithering and setting aside money for the corrupt to benefit from money meant for stadium construction. Now the chickens have come home to roost.
The way I see it, unless we act quickly, we as Kenyans will be left with egg on our faces for promising that we could host the tournament when we evidently had no plans to honour that promise.
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