Cllr WESLEY NEEDS A NATIONAL CONFERENCE
…To Reconcile LFA Leadership, Executives

By J. Burgess Carter
Published: 29 July, 2006

LFA Presidnet Izzetta Wesley

MONROVIA, July 29 --One of Liberia's progressive and outspoken sports administrators, Mr. Andy Quamie, has made a passionate appeal to the president of the Liberia Football Association (LFA) to call a conference that will help unite and reconcile the football family.

Mr. Quamie, a senior vice president of the premiership club Watanga FC, told the Daily Observer in an exclusive interview that the leadership of Cllr. Sombo Izetta Wesley at the LFA needs to call the conference to iron out the glaring and discouraging relationship currently existing among the local football governors.

“We as stake holders in the LFA can no longer sit supinely and fail to urge a conference that can bring together everybody-especially both winners and losers in the just ended-elections. Unless Madam Wesley calls a conference now, the FA will remain a failed and disjointed institution,” Andy warns.

The Watanga executive call comes few weeks following the rejection (by a narrow margin) by the Executive Committee, the nomination of the incumbent secretary general of the LFA Mr. Yanquey Borsay by Cllr. Wesley.

Quamie who was the campaign manager for defeated presidential candidate in the last LFA leadership race, Mr. Siaka Sheriff, noted that the conference is the only remedy that can bring harmony. He warned that the failure by the FA to meet and resolve their difference may give rise to more rejections of nominations for the post of secretary general as it has started already.

“The elections are over; our main focus now must be a strategy that will help develop our football program such as local and international sponsors. Both winners and losers need to come around the table and see whether the various campaign platforms can be merged to form a national agenda for the development of the game.”

Sports, especially football commentators see the call by young sports administrator Quamie for a reconciliatory conference as a welcome development coming from someone who only few months ago was supporting candidates who he believed were the best technocrats for the development of football in the country.

“The FA has some of the best brains, and what they need now is forget the past and forge ahead for a better tomorrow and formulate programs to build the skills and talents of our upcoming footballers,” one football technocrat noted.