Kenya is crying out for Visionary sports leaders
That Kenya has failed to fulfill its potential in the world of sports is beyond any doubt. Kenya is not lacking in talent. What is lacking is the presence of forward thinking, visionary sports leaders. Never in the history of Kenyan sports have we been blessed to see a truly visionary leader. A leader who can come forward with a vision for where he sees his particular sport in the near future, then proceed to execute a plan that sees his vision come true. In most cases, Kenya is cursed with leaders who are mainly concerned with how much money they can squeeze from already dry coffers. Others have good intentions but are completely bereft of ideas. Cheap politics dominate most sports associations in Kenya. As a result, most well intentioned and knowledgeable people keep away from these associations.
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The concept of long term planning is one that is completely foreign to Kenyan sports officials. You will hear officials in sports such as football and rugby wax lyrical about how they are determined to qualify for the world cup. What they do not realize is that for a team to qualify for the world cup, it has to have a base of high calibre players. And developing such players takes long term planning. Youth schemes have to put in place. They have to be well structured and the people who run them must have goals which they have to achieve. |
For as long as any Kenyan remembers, the Kenyan sports scene whether it be football, handball, rugby, volleyball or basketball have been dominated by institutional teams. For this reason attendance at local sporting events tends to be poor because fans have no attachment to institutional teams. Its no surprise therefore that the leagues have remained amateur. Just once I would like to see a sports officials create a long term plan or even a proposal on how a league can be converted from its amateur status to semi professional and eventually professional. No league can become professional overnight but with careful long term planning, it can be done. And herein lies the problem: Most Kenyan officials seem to be obsessed with short term gains and instant gratification at the expense of long term planning. See the previous article for ideas on how a league can be slowly transformed into a viable professional league.
Kenyan fans have continued to suffer humiliation after humiliation due to the lack of good leadership in all Kenyan sports federations
Kenyans have lost count of the number of times a team is supposed to travel abroad for a tournament. Often the federation officials wait until the last moment, then announce to the public that the trip is hanging in the balance due to lack of funds. Eventually the trip will be cancelled after the players have put their blood sweat and tears into training. This is the reason that Kenyan sports such as basketball and hockey get very little exposure. Most of these officials will shamelessly complain that the Federation has no funds as if that absolves them from any blame. If they are incapable of sourcing for funds then they should admit it, step aside and turn over the reins to someone who can.
Ask any Kenyan official why the team could not travel or why a youth development scheme cannot be established in Kenya and you will often hear excuse after excuse. Most officials are resigned to the idea that such schemes are not possible in Kenya due to lack of funding. Its is this defeatist attitude among sports officials that has led to low expectations. As a result any official who gets elected is simply expected to continue with the status quo and ensure that the league is running. No new goals are set and no new achievements are accomplished. The next official who comes in picks up from the last one and leaves the federations as he left it. This is why most Kenyan sports have remained at a standstill while the rest of the world has moved on. Kenya used to be a global giant in boxing and field hockey. Kenyan boxers dominated the commonwealth games and the All African games. The hockey team was rated among the worlds top 5 nations. But while other nations moved forward by setting new aggressive targets, continuously seeking to improve and stay abreast of the latest changes, Kenyans sports officials stood by and did nothing. We have a culture of low expectations from our sports officials. So long as the boxing federation keeps the league going, they are assumed to be doing their job. No attention is paid to whether they are trying to market the sport, create new fans, attract sponsorship, spread the sport outside of the capital scout and develop players with potential or anything of the sort. The same is true for most sports. What is needed in Kenya now is a radical change of culture.
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In order to reduce the instances of officials simply sitting back and doing nothing, a sports policy should be enacted that enforces accountability among federation officials. Every single sports official should be forced to come up with a program of what they want to accomplish during his term of office. The set targets should be measurable. They should then be assessed halfway through his term. If the said official has not made progress towards meeting the set goals, fresh elections should be called. In addition rules should be enforced on all administrators. For example, they should be forced to hold press conferences every two months to explain their progress. By forcing accountability, incompetent officials who are generally more interested in politics will be dissuaded from running for office. Those who insist on holding onto office even at the expense of the national game such as Kenya Hockey Union chairman, Hardev Singh will also be made accountable. |
Where possible, an open interview process should be used to appoint the most competent official. Such a process should be conducted by an independent firm. Each candidate should be asked to come forward with a vision that he hopes to accomplish and goals that he would like to achieve while in office. The idea is to introduce a level of professionalism in the way sports is run. Kenyans were highly disappointed when in 2005, Moni Wekesa was found to be the most competent among the interviewees for the post of Secretary General of the KFF. Yet instead of appointing Wekesa, the KFF top brass insisted on Dan Omino whom they considered an inside man. In other words meritocracy was thrown out of the window and selfish interests were put first. What else is new ?
Kenyans are tired of being subjected to humiliation after humiliation simply because the people running our sports are not capable of delivering results. The time has come for a radical change in the expectations placed on sports officials. No longer should they be allowed to simply ensure that the league is running as usual. The concept of goal setting must be enforced.
The talents of Kenyan youngsters will continue to be wasted unless forward thinking officials are given an opportunity to run the sports federations and the useless ones are weeded out
The Kenya government itself cannot be absolved from any blame. They have yet to grasp the idea that sports is at the heart of many Kenyans. It gives Kenyans a sense of pride. It gives them something to cheer for. It keeps the youth busy and out of trouble. And most importantly sports can be an engine for economic development and can provide jobs as was discussed in this previous article.
Too often a sports Minister calls upon officials to come up with ways to improve the performance of the national team. Such statements are typical of Kenya's politicians who are quick to assign responsibility but never take any concrete action. Ideally, the minister should take a proactive approach and sit down with each sports administrator and establish goals which each must be met. A viable sports policy that establishes performance measures for each sports administrators must be created. The Minister should be at the forefront of this effort.
It was even more disappointing to see the Permanent secretary for sports visiting the national volleyball team at the Athens Olympics specifically to give the players and the coach a dressing down over what she perceived as poor performance. That P.S ought to explain to us what she has done to make it possible for Kenya to perform better. In reality it is a miracle that Kenya is even good enough to qualify for the Olympics because neither her nor any other sports official has ever taken any concrete steps to make Kenya a volleyball power.
A list of sports officials most Kenyans would like to forget.
Maina Kariuki
he is possibly the worst sports official in Kenya's history. He came in promising to revolutionize the way sports is run in Kenya. But what Kenyans received was possibly the worst, most corrupt and most incompetent KFF office ever. He ran sponsors away, money mysteriously disappeared from KFF coffers and from stadiums and the game was thrown into disarray by infighting. But the worst problem was the sheer arrogance with which he utterly destroyed the sports and depressed the Kenyan football fraternity.
Hussein Swaleh
He was KFF secretary general while also acting as a player agent and an agent for kit suppliers such as Masita who eventually got a deal to kit the Harambee stars team that played in CAN 2004. Clearly the words conflict of interest mean nothing to KFF officials. In any case Swaleh was clearly more interested in monetary gain than in developing the sport.
Hardev Singh
Held onto the office of Kenya Hockey Union for close to a decade while running the game into the ground. Under him, Kenya which was once a global power and often qualified for the Olympics, sunk into oblivion and made no appearances in any tournaments not even the continental ones. In addition he somehow transferred the ownership of City park stadium to himself. Yet Mr. Singh clung onto his post stubbornly even going to court several times to keep his position.