CAF to lift Gambia ban soon – Alhagie Sillah

Former GFF Normalisation Committee Hon. Alhagie Sillah

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) will soon lift the two-year international ban on Gambia, according to Hon. Alhagie Sillah, chairman of the former GFF Normalisation Committee.

Sillah made this announcement during the Gambia Football Federationelective congress held at a local hotel on Saturday that saw former Gambian sportsminister Lamin Kaba Bajo elected as the new president of the GFF for the nextfour years.

The country was banned two-years by the continent’s governing body, CAF, shortly after it fielded in five overage players in a 2015 African U-20 Championship qualifier against Liberia in May.

The former GFF president Mustapha Kebbeh, under whose executive the country was banned, filed an appeal case but it was thrown out by CAF.

But the outgoing chairman of the GFF Normalisation Committee says he has held discussion with CAF president Issa Hayatou at its annual meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Sillah told the congress delegates that he was “confident the Gambia will not even serve six months of the two-year ban.”

Sillah quoted Hayatou as saying: “It is not only Gambia that is suffering from the banning but CAF is as well suffering because Gambia is a very important member of CAF.”

He further revealed that the Secretary General of CAF, Hicham El Amrani, told him: “‘Chairman, please just conduct the election and we will lift the ban. What we are avoiding is lift the ban and then you do not do the election’”.

“As of now, CAF is having a meeting and the committee of national associations at the level of FIFA, which they have lobbied aggressively and within a very short time will announce the lifting of the ban.”

“We will not even serve six months of the two-year ban……we will serve far less than that,” Sillah concluded.

Saturday’s elective congress saw Kaba, 49, and a former career diplomat, amassing 28 votes while his contestant Buba Mbye Bojang, a carpenter by profession, got 23 votes.

He was vying for the top executive job with two other candidates in Bojang and Omar Danso who formed an “alliance for advancement and standardization of Gambian football”.

Kaba will be flanked by Abdoulie ‘Star’ Jallow as his 1st Vice President, Ebou Faye as 2nd Vice President and Martin Gomez as his 3rd Vice President.