KAMPALA – Eng. Moses Magogo on Tuesday officially declared at Jevine Hotel – Rubaga plans to contest as Fufa president for a third consecutive term.
Magogo made the revelation during a ‘Quarterly Fufa-Media’ engagement, where he highlighted numerous achievements as well as challenges. Fufa go polls in August, this year and Magogo wants a third term of office, despite his busy scheduled time-table as a member of parliament – MP for Budiope East.
“Fufa elections have begun and my term as the president of the federation comes to an end on August 31,” he started, adding: “I am going to stand for another term. I told you when the right moment comes, I will declare.”
Magogo, who replaced St. Mary’s SS – Kitende head teacher, Lawrence Mulindwa in 2013 as Fufa supremo, claims that the experience and ideas he has attained; coupled with the parliamentary seat – which he officially assumes in May is the springboard that would assist him in propelling the game to better heights.
“I believe we have the ideas and experience. Going to parliament helps football because there are certain things that we can only get from there. We have done our first and second phase and now we want to go for the third phase, which is going to the 2026 Fifa World Cup,” he told attentive scribes.
Many people around Magogo or within the corridors of Fufa House – Mengo will tell stories of how Magogo is the best single item to have happened to Ugandan football. Much as the talk could have some resemblance of truth – judging by the country’s past qualification for Afcon finals; none dares to discuss the fact that the ‘youthful’ engineer is a traditional dictator –who believes that only his ideologies matter in the development of the game – the very reason he wants to stand again and again ‘alone’ –after manipulating the crafting of federation electoral laws that favour him and his cohorts, way back before he assumed that office. Other would be ‘good’ leaders are discouraged from competing for big offices through the system; and chants of ‘democracy’ are spread all over the corners to whoever cares to listen.
Fufa Electoral Commission recently released a road-map for the exercise, indicating that it would commence with the civic education for presiding officers for the various polling colleges, before conducting polls for the supreme office and the Executive Committee as per the ‘federation Statutes as well as the Electoral Code and Guidelines’ – which principles -the world soccer governing body – Fifa purportedly sanctioned.
Magogo claims that he wants to spearhead ‘the rebuilding a new cycle of rebuilding Uganda Cranes,’ –but how possible would such a scheme be accomplished when players as well as managers are bull-dozed especially when they express their feelings towards certain pertinent issues. These players or football managers aren’t kindergarten-going kids for anyone to start ordering them around on what to do, despite the presence of the code of ethics. If the players want their privileges – do exactly that, without testing their patience – punishing players or any other person on the national team because one has an office at the federation is abuse of office.
In addition – the recruitment of the head coach for the national team (s) should be transparent as possible – so as to attain the best and continuous positive results. The business of ‘dealers’ fronting ‘wheelbarrow pushers’ to be considered for national team jobs has not assisted the game to develop and should therefore be halted.
The need to engage almost every Ugandan who loves the sport should be high on the agenda – many people feel relegated to other sports disciplines – despite their undisputable love for the sport.
For the Good of the game.
