Owner and President of Division Two side Tamale Football club Ibrahim Gagbuni has sent a message to the GFA to desist from disenfranchising the five northern regions with 18 national Division One League.
Two days ago, the GFA announced that they are setting a committee to figure out a way to reduce the number of Division One League participants from 48 to 18. They seek to achieve this through Article 81(6) of the GFA statutes.
Ibrahim however expressed his concern at this approach with a long statement on Ashh FM.
Read the statement below:
With all the good intent and purposes behind the formation of 18 club national division 1 league, if care is not taken, it will derail the development of the game in the rural parts of the country especially the Five (5) Northern Regions. The financial pressure will be unbearable for northern clubs.
Could you imagine travelling from Bolga to Accra? 20 hours of travel on a bus? And the cost involved?
As good as it may sound, this is just not the right time for us to adopt this new policy. We need to tarry until such a time that we are furnished with all the modalities of the policy.
Yes it is a fact that, you cannot have a second tier league with a stronger voting power than the first tier league according to international best practice.
Already as it is, some clubs up north are in severe financial strain; the longest of journey travelled is bolga and Goaso, and with that you can see the strain it puts on the clubs.
However, we must also be careful of not further wasting the position as its already is.
It will be difficult to draw conclusions at the moment until the fine details are made available. Then, we can really assess its merits and how helpful it will be without disenfranchising any club located in other parts of the country.
In any case, 24 clubs is probable a realistic number , however, like I said earlier, if care is not taken, it will disfranchise the northern clubs.but like I said,we are unable to really have a proper conversation until all the modalities are made available to us.
At that point, we will be able to understand the policy; input=process =output.