Lamin Kaba Bajo is new Gambia FA president

Lamin Kaba Bajo elected Gambia Football Federation president

Former Gambian sports minister Lamin Kaba Bajo has been elected as the new president of the Gambia Football Federation (GFF) for the next four years.

The 49-year-old career diplomat amassed 28 votes while his contestant Buba Mbye Bojang, a carpenter by profession, got 23 votes in an election held at a local hotel.

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”.

But Danso stepped down as a contestant in the final moments of the election thus leaving Kaba and Bojang as frontrunners for the top job.

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.

Kaba has vowed to translate his great leadership skills to reunite the stakeholders in football and bring back sanity into Gambian football.

He also promised to develop and promote a healthy football community in The Gambia, stabilize and improve the financial and administrative infrastructure of Gambian football and ensure better cooperation between the Federation, football stakeholders, The Gambia Government, CAF, and FIFA.

Lamin Kaba Bajo, born in Brikama, West Coast Region, is a seasoned diplomat and politician who have served The Gambia with distinction in several ministerial and diplomatic missions. Bajo attended Muslim High School and the University of Leicester, UK, where he graduated with a Master’s Degree in Diplomatic Studies. He joined the now defunct gendarmeries in 1984 and rose to rank of a Captain and Commander of the Presidential Guards Corps.

Kaba Bajo is one of the founding members of New Town United nawettan team in Brikama in 1988 that has competed in the third division qualifiers but did not succeed in qualifying. New Town United was the champions of the 2013 Brikama nawettan. He was also a member of the then Justice Football Club in Brikama which is now transformed to a social club. In 2012, as the Gambia’s ambassador to Morocco, he initiated the camping of the Female Scorpions at no cost to the government or GFF before travelling to the World Cup in Azerbaijan.

Currently he is the president of KGI Football Club which is competing in the GFF second division league, Bajo had also served in various positions within the Gambia Armed Forces before been appointed as the minister of Interior and member of the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council. He also served as the minister for Local Government and Lands; Religious Affairs; Foreign Affairs; Fisheries, Water Resources and National Assembly and the minister of Interior.

He served in 1997 as the Secretary of State (Minister) for Youth and Sports and also chaired the Zone II Sports Minister’s Bureau in 1997/98. Bajo had also served as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with concurrent accreditation to the Republic of Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, State of Kuwait, Sultanate of Oman, Kingdom of Bahrain and Jordan; ambassador to the Islamic Republic of Iran, ambassador to the State of Qatar, ambassador to the Kingdom of Morocco with concurrent accreditation to Tunisia and Cyprus.