Real De Banjul has issued a Press Release through its President Mr. William Abraham. In the Release the concernedStakeholders were branded as ‘so called Stakeholders with malicious and fake news’. While such a reaction is expected from Real De Banjul, it is important for us to further clarify the statements made at the Press Conference.
We wish to refer Mr. Abraham to point Number 7 of our Press Statements issued to the journalists and others during the Press Conference which reads; “There were evidence of favouritism and elements of match fixing . Whether a loan facility or not but GFF gave D1,000,000 (one million Dalasis) support to Real De Banjul FC during the CAF Club Championship in 2015, but they refused to provide the same to Brikama United FC when they qualified for the CAF Confederation Cup in 2016. Brikama United FC disgracefully withdrew last minute when they discovered that the doors of GFF are not open to all clubs”.
We are pleased to state that Real De Banjul confess that they have indeed received D1,000,000 loan from GFF (even though it is obvious that GFF is not a Financial Institution and not in the business of lending money)as conveyed in their reaction to the above statement.
The reason advanced by Real De Banjul was that due to the delay in receiving their claims from CAF, GFF partly financed the cost of the air tickets for their delegation to Algeria. This is not different from what we stated in our Press Statement and we wonder what Real De Banjul is purportedly refuting in their reaction to our Press Statements.
Our issue with GFF granting loan to Real De Banjul is that GFF has discriminated against Brikama United by refusing to support the latter when they were in similar situation.
Below is a re-account of what transpired between Brikama United FC and the President of GFF – Mr. KabaBajo when Brikama United qualified to represent Gambian in CAF club competition:
- The President of GFF MrKabaBajo promised Brikama United during their ‘Road To CAF Campaign’ that GFF will support the Club through a ‘special approved fund’ which is meant to support clubs in CAF Club Championship Competition. He stressed that Brikama United will be the first club to benefit from this support. Brikama United took this promise very seriously and were shocked when GFF President failed to honour his promise which resulted in the withdrawal of Brikama United from this prestigious competition and dashing the hopes and aspirations of the Brikama United players and the fans.
2. To make the already bad situation even worse, the GFF President was aware of the sponsorship arrangement between Brikama United and a renowned company which was a bit delayed because the company was going through the normal approval process for their annual budget. It was obvious that had GFF supported Brikama United in a form of a loan, the club would have been in a position to repay the loan.
In light of these two points stated above and bearing in mind that both Brikama United and Real De Banjul are equal members of GFF, we wonder why the President of GFF did not provide similar support to Brikama United as they have done for Real De Banjul so that Brikama United would compete in this prestigious CAF competition.
The conclusion we can make about this issue of GFF granting one member (Real De Banjul) of the Federation a loan to compete in the CAF competition while denying the other (Brikama United) the opportunity to compete in a similar competition is favoritism.
It is this segregation which is commonly known as apartheid that we highlighted in our Press Statements and we urge all to condemn especially the keen followers of football.
By
Concerned Stakeholders. # BRING BACK OUR FOOTBALL.
