What should I write? Sincerely I don’t have words to express frustrations sportsmen and women go through in this country. Who will save this situation to restore sanity? Will it be president, his deputy, the cabinet secretary in charge of sports or football Kenya federation? Your guess is good as mine. A team like AFC leopards spends over 1M per month to meet the operation costs and salaries for players and staff. If such a team wins the league, they go home with sh. 3m after playing for one year. That amount was raised from sh. 1m to 3m for KPL winner after sportpesa took over the sponsorship. That means a premier league team spends over sh. 15m per year to run its affairs. Most teams cannot meet their expenses, which leads to sacrificing the wages for the players. Some players can survive without wages for over five months. These are men and women with families and they ought to meet their daily expenses. Even some are evicted from their rented houses.
The most disgusting and embarrassing scenario is to compete in tournament, spend a lot and win it just be given a round of applause as the reward. That’s what Vihiga Queens soccer team went through after winning the KWPL for the third time in a row. The team received sh. 250,000(Kenyan shillings NOT DOLLARS) when they won the league in 2017 and sh. 100,000 in 2018 and recently a round of applause in 2019. This is the saddest point this year within the sporting fraternity. Cumulative amount of money received for winning 3 times is sh. 350,000. This is the total expenditure of the team per month.The team which is led by coach Alex Alumirah who has worked tirelessly and produced a couple of players in the National team and even some players have found their way abroad. It’s sponsored by the county government of Vihiga. Thanks to the Governor Wilberforce Otichillo and his deputy Patrick Saisi.
Since early 90’s the ministry of sports, youth, gender and culture do receive over sh. 80B every financial year. Those who are primitive in mathematics sh. 1B is equivalent to sh. 1000,000,000. That’s one thousand million. Assuming the government decides to spend sh. 2B for sports and leave sh. 78B for gender, youth and culture. From the sh. 2B take sh. 1B to award other sports apart from soccer. Then the remaining sh. 1B to fund soccer activities only. Each KPL team to receive sh. 10m, NSL team sh. 6m, Div 1 to receive sh. 4m, Div 2 to receive sh. 2m and county league team sh. 1m each. The total amount will be sh. 440,000,000. The soccer women teams are just two levels . The top level KWPL, each team to receive sh. 10m, then the next level each to receive sh. 6m. This turns to be sh. 320,000,000 in total. For both men and women leagues the facilitation fee will be sh. 760,000,000. The remaining amount will be sh. 240m in the basket. The winning teams, runners up, third position and 4th position for both men and women top flight leagues to receive sh. 30m, 15m, 10m and 5m respectively. The second, third and fourth tier the winning to receive sh. 15m, 10m, 5m respectively. The very bottom level, that’s county league, the winning to receive sh. 2m.The national team can be financed by FKF.
This seems a pipe dream but if as Kenyans we vote correctly for the political class and FKF then it might be a reality. The giant Sportpesa betting company had the dream of funding all sporting activities in the country but was fought by both Executive and legislature. It’s now the work of FKF to sweet-talk the cooperate firms which includes betting companies to finance to take over various leagues and finance teams directly. It’s now proved beyond reasonable doubt that the National government and majority counties cannot and will never have sports as an agenda. The reason is just corruption. Now that it’s the ministry of sports, youth and gender, they tend to pump money in non-existing programmes for gender and youth so that they account for sh. 80B. Dear ladies and gentlemen in sports, let’s not give up. We can start by influencing the electorate on the type of individuals to elect to county government and national assembly. The moment we fix this level, it will be easier to deal with national level through proper legislation.
What are the MPs doing for the embarrassment Vihiga QUEENS soccer team went through? Dear my fellow sportsmen forward this message 10 times to your MP. This message ought to get deep to the center of power beginning with Ambassador Amina Mohamed’s office.
