A 14-member interim executive committee headed by former Gambia Football Association (GFA) president, Ousman B Conateh (Fisco), has been named by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, to temporarily take charge of the country’s football association.

This development came after the Ministry announced the dissolution of the then executive committee of The GFA at a press conference held Friday at the Independence Stadium.

It is the third time the GFA is being dissolved. It would be recalled that then Vice President Bakary Bunja Darboe first dismissed the executive following a poor performance at the 1988 Zone II Championship, while Buba Baldeh also did the same thing in 1992 while he was the minister of Sports.

As promised during the media conference, the Ministry in a press release issued yesterday signed by the permanent secretary- Mambanyick Njie revealed the names of 14-member committee.

Though the release fell short of giving a timeframe in which the committee will run the affairs of the football association, sources close to Daily Observer intimated that they have been given a six-week mandate weeks before an elected executive will be put in place.

The 14-member committee comprises of Ousman B. Conateh, alais Fisco, Honarary Life President of the Gambia Football Association (GFA) as Chairman; Omar Sey, former GFA president as vice chairman; and Salifu K. Jaiteh, former second vice president of the GFA as member.

Other members of the committee are Remi Joiner, a banker and accountant; Cherno Marena, Principal State Counsel; Furmus Gomez, a representative for the Upper River Region; Sainabou Kujabi-Njie, president of the Sports Journalist Association of The Gambia; Joe Kalamba of KMC; Lamin Jawara of North Bank Region; Cherno Bara Touray, former director, Department of Youth and Sports; Sulayman Joof of West Coast Region; Kebba Yero Manneh of Central River Region; Ebou Sambou of Lower River Region; and Abdou Salam Jammeh, the current acting secretary general of the GFA.

Though some of the committee members might have little or no experience in sports administration most of them are no strangers to sports administration and football in particular. We profile below some of the members of the committee.

Ousman B Conateh

Ousman B. Conateh is a former president of The Gambia Football Association and the current Honorary Life President. He started his involvement in sports administration with cycling and cricket as early as 1952 until the formation of Wallidan Football Club in 1969. He became a member of the executive committee of the GFA until the then vice president of The Gambia, Bakary Bunja Darboe dissolved the GFA after Gambia’s poor performance at the 1988 Zone Two championship in Guinea Conakry.

Fisco, as he is fondly called chaired a commission of inquiry set up to look into that poor performance in Bissau before he bounced back as a member of the new executive committee until the then Sports minister Buba Baldeh also dissolved the FA in 1992. OB refused to be part of an interim committee that was set up after the 1992 dissolution, but he was elected president of the GFA in 1993, a position he retained in 1997. He voluntarily stepped down in 2001. He was later made Honorary Life President of the GFA.

Omar Sey

Omar Sey also served as president of GFA during the last decade but came into prominence as a sports administrator in the early 1970’s. As one of the pioneers of the Department of Youth and Sports, he became the first director in 1973. Sey, an educationist and former lecturer of psychology at the Gambia College was also a former politician and a former minister of Foreign Affairs between 1987 and 1994.

He is also a former referee and referee instructor and a member of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and FIFA referee committee.He became the president of GFA in 2004 when Alhaji Gabbie Sosseh was booted out and remained so until Seedy Kinteh won the elections to steer the affairs of the FA in 2005.

Salifu K. Jaiteh

Salifu K Jaiteh, a businessman by profession, was one-time second vice president of the GFA. He became involved in football when he founded and chaired the defunct SK United FC. He was also involved with three other clubs - Flaminins, Sait Matty and Gambia Armed Forces Football Clubs.

Jaiteh was a member of an interim committee headed by the late IJK Tambajang in 1992 after then Sports minister Buba Baldeh dissolved the FA. He became the GFA second vice president in 1998 for four years before he left in 2002 and has since been the honorary life vice president of the FA.

Sainabou Kujabi-Njie

Sainabou Kujabi-Njie started as a journalist and columnist with the Daily Observer Newspaper in 2004 before she became a reporter with the defunct Effective Communications in 2005. She went into freelance journalism later that year before joining The Point Newspaper in 2006, where she is now the sports editor.

She had some training on Sports Administration and Sexual and Reproductive Health Education. Sainabou is also a member of the Gambia Football Association Media and Publicity Committee and the National Sports Tribunal as well as the Gambia National Olympic Media and Women in Sports Committee.

A former secretary general of the Sports Journalist Association of The Gambia, Sainabou covered the Pan-African Parliament sitting in Mitrand, South Africa, in 2008 and the IOC’s 6th forum on sports education and culture in Busan, South Korea in 2009. She also attended the 2005 African U-17 and World Championships in Banjul and Peru respectively.

Kebba Yero Manneh

Kebba Yero Manneh, a former secretary general of the GFA started as a youth leader at the Department of Youth and Sports in 1973 when he was still in Form Three in secondary school.

In 1979, he qualified as a teacher from the then Yundum College and despite practicing as a teacher, was also coordinating youth and sports activities in the then McCarthy Island Division, now Central River Region on a voluntary basis until 1989. In 1989, Kebba Yero Manneh turned social commentator and was elected as the secretary general of GFA. After a three-year term, he was re-elected to the position in 1992 before Buba Baldeh dissolved the association.

At the CAF congress in Dakar, Senegal, ahead of the finals of the 1992 African Cup of Nations, Keba Yero Manneh was elected as the chairman of the UZOFOOT (Union of Zonal Football Organisation) now called Zone II, comprising of eight countries. He was one of those that conceptualized the National Youth Service Scheme (NYSS).

Cherno Bara Touray

Cherno Bara Touray, a veteran sportsman became the first deputy director of the Department of Youth and Sports. He was later elevated to the position of director until 1995. He became the commissioner of the Central River Division between 1997 and 2001.

Bara was later appointed as the consular at the Gambian Embassy in Guinea Bissau before his elevation to the position of ambassador. He was also a team manager of the senior national football team of The Gambia and was one of the founders of Real de Banjul Football Club in 1967.

Others

Remi Joiner is a banker and accountant while Cherno Marena is the principal state counsel. Furmus Gomez is the representative of the Upper River Region at the National Sports Council. Joe Kalamba served as the secretary general of the Serrekunda East Sports Development Committee until he was removed two years ago, having lost in an election. Lamin Jawara is the representative from the North Bank Region.

Ebou Sambou is the representative from the Lower River Region and Abdou Salam Jammeh is the current acting secretary general of the GFA Gambia Football Association. He replaced Jammeh Bojang as the secretary general of the FA, albeit on an acting basis after the latter became the secretary general of the West African Football Union (WAFU).