Kenya dissolves football governing board

Young Kenyans play soccer in a dusty field in Nairobi in June 2006. The Kenyan government has dissolved the country's fractious football governing board in a bid to end the chaos that has been plaguing the sport.

The Kenyan government has dissolved the country's fractious football governing board in a bid to end the chaos that has been plaguing the sport.

Less than two weeks after FIFA banned Kenya from international play for failing to implement reforms, Sports Minister Maina Kamanda said the Kenya Football Federation (KFF) would be replaced by a caretaker committee.

He said KFF officials had failed to resolve the dispute with FIFA, world football's ruling body, which has complained of government interference in the sport and is demanding that two rival premier leagues be merged.

"I am left with no alternative but to conclude that Kenyan football needs a fresh start in the management of its affairs," Kamanda told reporters at a Nairobi news conference on Friday, lamenting the high cost of failure.

"In the past three years, the government has injected no less than 60 million shillings (834,500 dollars, 654,026 euros) directly or indirectly into Kenyan football without any visible signs of success," he said.

Effectively, all KFF's 21 countrywide branches were also dissolved until the government allows the body to hold fresh elections, said Kamanda, who also heads the Kenya National Sports Council.

In addition, the minister formed a panel to probe allegations that Bob Monro, a Canadian, had given false information to FIFA and sabotaged KFF operations.

Monro is the founder of the world famous Mathare Youth Sports Association, which was nominated for the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, for its activities to end delinquency through sports in slums.

Friday's move came as the KFF has been unable to resolve differences around the merging of the premier leagues that lead to FIFA suspending it on October 24, after warnings of punitive measures from the world governing board.

The FIFA ban was Kenya's second in two years.

It first suspended Kenya for three months in 2004 for government interference but the situation was reversed after the country agreed to draw up new statutes.

Recent problems have included deadly fan violence, physical attacks on rival KFF officials, a match-fixing allegation and clashes over the formation of the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) to run Kenyan football on a professional basis.