Time is a great source of irony. It reveals the truth in every matter, yet, often after the fact and when very little can be salvaged.
Only a week ago, the Ghana Football Association was pontificating piety, trumpeting its innocence in the thorny issue of Black Stars budgets and national team expenditure.
The football governing body said its role in national teams’ expenditure was limited to simply drafting budgets.
To say that in response to President Mahama’s call for accountability is to suggest that they would remain oblivious to the contents of the budget.
As fate would have it, it has taken all of two working days to expose the extent of information and detail, the GFA has in such matters.
JoySports has intercepted a memo written by the GFA’s General Secretary, with details of their proposed budget for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Appearance fees
On November 14, 2022, Black Stars coach Otto announced a squad list of twenty-six players to represent Ghana at the World Cup.
Beyond the other-worldly experience of playing on the grandest stage of all, each player was going to earn a whopping $100,000 as an appearance fee.
What Ghanaians did not know, was that the GFA had budgeted for an additional twenty-eight people to receive appearance fees, taking the total number of appearance fee beneficiaries to fifty-four.
Yes, FIFTY-FOUR!
That sums up to $5.4 million.
Otto Addo’s ”Personal Assistant”
The GFA penciled down Otto Addo’s ”Personal Assistant” to receive an honorarium of $20,000.
He or she earned the same amount as Ghana’s scouts and as much as the head of delegation for the tournament.
Plane tickets.
Another curious item on the GFA’s budget was the cost of air tickets to enplane the Black Stars players to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
The GFA budgeted to pay $7,000 for each player.
How did the plane tickets cost the same for each player when they flew to the UAE from different parts of the world? For example, Andre Ayew was playing in Qatar at the time. How could his plane ticket cost the same as Daniel Afriyie Barnieh who joined from Ghana?
Purse holder
If ever there was any doubt about the high-level collusion between the Finance Ministry, Sports and Recreation Ministry, and the GFA, it is the honorarium for the purse holder.
The chief spending officer was still penciled down to earn $10,000 for doing what would essentially have been the same job the Finance Ministry pays him or her for.
The full budget is contained in the document below.
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